


Nightcrawler

by Redcoat_Officer



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Case 53, Gen, Seattle, The Elite
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:40:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 30,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24170701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Redcoat_Officer/pseuds/Redcoat_Officer
Summary: Something stirs in the darkness of a rainy city, creeping through the gutters and hiding in the shadows.Branded and abandoned, all it wants to do is hide.
Comments: 13
Kudos: 27





	1. Vagrant: 1.01

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _**nightcrawler** (noun)_
> 
> 1: an earthworm that comes to the surface at night and is used as fishing bait.
> 
> 2: _informal_ : a person who is socially active at night.

Warm… Why do I feel so warm…?

Uncomfortable, like I’ve fallen asleep next to a roaring fireplace. I shuffle uneasily in my sleep, as the warmth slowly rouses me. I’m pulled away from slumber, as sensations return in greater strength. Touch is the first, the warmth rising into an uncomfortable heat that feels like it should have me sweating, but instead all I can feel is distinct discomfort. I’ve fallen asleep on something hard and abrasive, an uncomfortable flat surface. Sound is next, a low constant rumbling filling my ears. Smell too, much too faint and distant. I feel the weight of my eyelids, and know I can’t hold on to sleep any longer.

Three pairs of eyes open.

I scramble to my feet, panicking, only to fall as too many limbs struggle for purchase. I roll, slamming into a hard metal edge, and feel myself pull at something in panic. All of a sudden, my sensations are gone. I can’t touch or smell or feel anything other than a faint numbness, but I can still see and I can still here. Without that sense of wrongness, I start to think clearly. I reach for memories, names and places only to feel them slip away.

I don’t know who I am.

The thought shoots through my brain like lightning, electrifying my senses and sending me scrambling even further back into the darkness, moving without moving, without limbs or muscles. I’m part of the shadows, I realise, merged with the darkness underneath the metal box. A rat skitters over and through me, passing through me without noticing, and I slowly calm myself down. The shadows help, taking away any flailing limbs, or tears. I just wallow in the shade for who knows how long, occasionally creeping forwards up to the light before flinching back in fear.

Eventually, I settle myself up close to the edge of the metal, still within the shadows but looking out into the light. It’s strange, seeing without eyes. I can see all around me, but my viewpoint changes as I move. Even formless, I have an idea of where I am in the shadows. Part of me feels like it should make me nauseous, but instead it just feels natural. A couple walks past, dressed in suits, and I watch them from the shadows. They’re arguing, and the woman storms off, leaving the man standing alone in the alley. They aren’t the same as me, but I know that they’re normal, and I’m not. I keep hiding, and the man walks off in the opposite direction.

Nobody else passes me, and I start to think that it’s quiet enough for me to come out. I don’t want to, don’t want to feel again, don’t want to leave the comforting darkness for the harsh light. I wait there for a while, trying to build up the courage, as the sun disappears behind unseen clouds, and rain starts to fall. That’s what motivates me to move; the outside seems a lot less violent with gentle rain running down the alleyway. I bring myself to the edge of the shadows, and gingerly reach forwards.

Fingertips form out of the darkness, shadows gathering and pooling into five pitch-black digits, longer than they should be and ending in sharp points, like claws. The moment the limb starts to form, I feel its presence in my mind. Touch returns, and I wiggle each individual finger before pushing them out into the light. A hand follows, black and leathery, then a far-too-long arm, skinny but tough. Its mirror emerges on the other side, and I hesitate before pushing even further out, as two more arms join the first pair. This pair are less normal-looking than the first, with three long fingers and a hooked thumb. They are a little longer, and feel a lot stronger, than the first.

Any further thoughts are banished from my mind as my head forms out of the darkness and my perspective switches as six beady eyes form. The head is long, I can tell as I paw at it with my hands, my claws, and the eyes are staggered regularly along its length, letting me see more than I know I should be able to, even though it feels natural. The rain runs in rivulets down my leathery skin as I pull the rest of myself, cool to the touch and surprisingly refreshing. A long, thin, body forms, with skin stretched over a prominent ribcage before narrowing across thin hips that support two powerful legs, bent at the knee and tipped with talons. Last to come is a long thin tail that spools out of a narrow strip of shadow, until my connection to the darkness has entirely gone.

I try to stand, only to sink back onto four limbs as my legs groan in protest. That doesn’t seem right. I should be able to walk on two feet, shouldn’t I? Instead, it’s four limbs that feel natural, with my more normal arms tucked away into my flanks, my sides. I pace around the alleyway, feeling the unnatural limbs become more natural the more I use them, like an old memory returning.

That brings me back to my memories. Or rather, to the absence in my mind where I feel my memories should be.

My eyes dart around the alleyway, finding a patch of water safe from the rain underneath a small overhang, and I pace towards it. The water is almost flat, and clear enough for me to use it as a mirror. I see a black face staring up at me, angular and predatory, with six beady yellow eyes and a long mouth running along the length of my head, beak-like, that opens to reveal flesh and teeth the same midnight-black as the rest of me. It feels somehow familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, like something unnatural that is nonetheless part of me.

I hear people talking and panic, leaping right at the narrow band of darkness beneath the lid of the metal box. I lose my sight, then gain it again as my entire body seem to turn to smoky darkness, before compressing itself through the far-too-thin gap. There’s no light in here, except for the faint glint from the narrow gap where the metal has been warped. I find that I can move freely in the darkness, passing from one side of the dark space to the other like I’m flying through the air, and squeezing my formless presence in and amongst the sacks of what I quickly realise is garbage.

Part of me panics at that, flying around the dumpster and only barely managing to stop myself from flying out into the light, but sense quickly reasserts itself. I don’t even have a form right now, so why would a little garbage scare me? Instead I move myself as close to the light as I can, and watch as a couple of men in matching clothes step into the alleyway, waving an enormous vehicle in behind them. I can only see the back of it, a huge container built into a trailer on top of some truly immense wheels, as the two men open up a pair of doors set into the opposite wall.

They start to load crates into the back of the truck, taking their time and stopping for a cigarette or a chat, and I think a couple of hours pass before they shut the doors to the building and the truck, which drives off as the two men head home. I could recognise their language, which is something, but they weren’t saying anything useful, just idle sports gossip. They’re gone, but I don’t come out. That was too close to being seen, and some part of me revolts at the mere idea of being spotted when I don’t want to be. So I wait, as the rain carries on and the grey sky turns orange, before descending into the pitch-black of an overcast night.

It’s not perfect, of course, and a lot of the alley is still lit by the orange glow of streetlights on the main road, but the night’s sky somehow feels comforting to me, and I leave my hiding place. I don’t take it slow, this time, hurling myself at the tiny sliver of light as fast as my formless self will go. In an instant, I go from a shapeless presence in the darkness to a long and predatory creature, and my view shifts back to those beady yellow eyes.

The city is stretched out to my right, with its bright lights and drunken revellers, but that doesn’t appeal to me. Not when compared to the pitch-black space between the tall buildings of this alley. I pounce into the shadows, turning immaterial and flitting up and down through the darkness at the edge of the light. It’s not flight, not quite, and I’m limited in my movements to anything free from the orange streetlights, or any other source of light, but it feels right somehow. It feels liberating.

I can’t quite make it up all eight stories of the building, but I get close enough to let my momentum carry me the last few feet over the lip of the roof, before rolling in the gravel surface atop the tower. I take a moment to shake away a few scraps of rock that have got caught in my joints, before turning my eyes upwards to look over the city.

It’s too big. Impossibly tall towers scraping up against the clouds themselves, lit by a steady orange-yellow light from countless windows, with the even brighter glow of the streetlamps making the trenches between the towers brighter still. The clouds, low in the sky and heavy with the promise of rain, glow faintly orange as well, as the light from the city is reflected back on it. The buildings have no concise style: some are made of stone, and smaller than the others, while the tallest ones seem to be entirely made of glass, tipped with spires and blinking red lights. Closer to me, what looks like an enormous pillar rising out of the ground, tipped by a wide saucer lit up like a star in gleaming white.

It’s too much, and I instinctively retreat into the shadows behind an access point on the roof, hiding myself from the sheer scale of it all. I stay there for a while, somehow more comfortable looking over the skyline through the darkness, before deciding that the roof just isn’t for me, and diving off the edge of the building and into the darkness of the alleyway, turning immaterial halfway down and landing on the floor in a pile of shadows. Nice to know that I can do that, though I probably should have started with something less drastic than an eight-story drop.

I pull myself out of the shadow without leaving it, hiding among the shadows rather than in them, and curl up in a ball underneath a small overhang as the rain starts up again. I just can’t put this off any longer. I don’t know who I am. I can feel things, fleeting thoughts or images that elude me as soon as I reach for them. I have no name, no memories and no answers. There’s a patch of water pooling a few inches away, and I look again. What am I? I think I’m human, or at least I used to be, and I know what a human is. I know what garbage is, too, and almost everything else I’ve seen today. How can I know all that, but not know my own name?

My eyes are drawn back to my mirror image in the water, long and sleek, with absolutely no chance of ever passing for human. I linger on one of my shoulders, and lean in closer as I start to make something out; a small patch of darkness, lighter than the rest of my skin, shaped into a horseshoe. A brand. Another unsolved mystery, but one I can’t bring myself to care about, not when compared to everything else that’s weighing on my mind.

Instead, I curl up in the alleyway, and try to get some sleep.

It doesn’t work, not when my stomach starts to rumble and moan. It’s still dark out, but I can’t stay here any longer, not when it feels like I haven’t eaten in a week. I roll myself onto all fours, scratching at my head with my hands to try and force some sense into me, and turn to the entrance of the alley. It’s lit by a bright orange streetlamp, which feels uncomfortable in a way I can’t quite explain, but I force my way through it. Gingerly, I peer out into the street, seeing a couple of obvious drunks far to far away to notice me, and a couple of people who are much closer, but walking away.

There’re a few sacks of garbage on the side of the street, right underneath the light, and I dart for them, slipping comfortably into the darkness hidden amongst the pile. I can’t travel into the sacks, but I don’t need to when I can apparently compress myself this small. Still, I can’t keep hopping between piles of garbage, not when there’s so many people around. I look around, my eye inevitably being drawn to the pounding rain that I can see running through my shelter, but I can’t feel it.

It flows along the sidewalk, pooling into the gutters and departing into a drain recessed into the side of the road. A drain cast in deep shadow. I pounce, not caring who sees me, safe in the sure certainty that I can hide myself away down there, and none of their eyes will matter. I leap across the road in two great bounds, before diving headfirst into the drain, rushing along underneath the streets of the city. I feel free, moving faster than ever before, and only having to duck under the occasional patch of light from the grates.

I revel in my senses, before slowing as I remember why I came down here. I start to stop at the grates, forming just enough of my head in the light to peer out into the street, six beady yellow eyes peeking out into the world. I find it on my sixth drain; a glass-fronted building filled with shelves laden with all sorts of packets. Even now, with only the top of my head formed, I can still feel hunger pangs eating away at me. I creep out of the drain, rushing into the shadows beneath a parked car before anyone has a chance to see me and wait for my moment.

A group of people come out of the store, dressed in expensive clothes and carrying canned and bottled drinks. When they leave, there’s a brief moment when the door hangs open, held by some unseen force, and I take that chance to rush through the doors, sliding under the closest set of shelves before anyone has a chance to see me, or so I hope. I peek out nervously, staying hidden in the darkness, but there are no screams, and nobody seems to have seen me. I look around again, before moving up to the light and forming my arm in the aisle, reaching up to the shelves above me and pulling down the first thing I can grab.

There’s barely enough room down here for me to keep my arm formed, clutching my pre-packaged sandwich like some sort of prize, and there’s not enough room for my head, so I can’t actually eat it. I turn my arm to shadow, trying to bring the food with me, but it just flops to the floor uselessly. I can’t eat this here, and I can’t bring it with me. I carry the sandwich around under the small row of shelves, looking for the section with the fewest customers, and brace myself before materialising me head in the aisle, tearing the sandwich out of its packaging and wolfing it down.

It’s much too bland for my tastes, tastes I didn’t know I had until now, but that doesn’t stop me from finishing the whole thing, before reaching back with my arm to pull a fresh pair from the shelves behind me. I continue ducking under the shelves and pilfering food from the shop, a random mix of sweet, sour, spicy and everything in between, until I don’t feel hungry anymore. I would take a couple of canned goods with me for later, but I can’t carry them with me through the shadows.

Instead, I snag a bottle of something strong and drink it in the corner of the shop, feeling the harsh alcohol sliding down my throat before doing something as it reaches the shadows. I know the food is going somewhere, I don’t feel hungry anymore, but I’ll be damned if I know where that is. The drink gives me the courage to make a run for the door, and I cringe as I hear screams behind me, before slipping back into the gutters and off into the comforting night.


	2. Vagrant - 1.02

I don’t like looking up at the city. I know it’s only been a few hours since I woke up, but there’s something about the impossible buildings that fills me with a deep sense of unease. They’re too big, too new, too bright. I like it a lot better when I look down; when I ignore the tall towers in favour of the comforting brick of the smaller structures, with their dark and welcoming shadows. It’s easy to slip in and out of them, at times almost flying through the darkness. It feels natural, it feels right, but I know it really shouldn’t.

Why am I like this? Was I born this way? Something about that doesn’t feel right, but who am I to say? Was I made? Is there anyone else like this? Anyone else like me? My mind is racing with thousands of unanswered questions, my thoughts travelling as fast as my body through the shadows. I can’t think of them right now. I jump out of the darkness onto a narrow balcony two stories up, seemingly abandoned and deep in shadow. My kind of place.

I spend a while with my arms, two of them, resting on the balcony while I watch the streets below. The shadows here are deep enough that all anyone would be able to see of meis three pairs of beady yellow eyes, giving me a comforting sense of anonymity. A couple of people stagger past, women in short dresses and men in dark suits, but none of them so much as glance in my direction. Part of me wonders if I should go down there and try to talk to them, but another part finds the whole idea repugnant. It’s not like they’d listen to someone who looks like this…

Something lights up the building opposite me, a bright blue light that flashes and shakes. Instinct drives me down behind the balcony as the harsh light gets brighter and brighter. I peer over the balustrade, just in time to see a boxy grey truck drive past, with flashing blue lights that send me reeling back from its intensity. A little further down the street it emits a keening wail that sets my teeth on edge as it forces its way past a couple of cars. Once it’s gone, I curl up underneath the edge of the balcony and try to fall asleep.

I still can’t manage it - something just doesn’t seem right - and pretty soon the rain starts up again. I don’t mind it as much as I feel like I should, but it’s still not an altogether pleasant experience. I try to move out of the rain by huddling up against the building, but it’s coming in at an angle. Water starts to pool on the balcony, draining away agonisingly slowly, and I reluctantly hop up onto the balustrade, before leaping off into the shadows. Something tells me I shouldn’t try that move when there isn’t a shadow to catch my fall…

The rain can’t touch me when I’m hiding in the darkness, but I can’t tough anything either. I can’t hide in the shadows forever, no matter how much I might want to, so I slip out of the darkness, and start to look for shelter. The night goes on, as people withdraw from the streets. I’m almost alone now, save for the occasional car that sends me scurrying back into the shadows. The streets are still lit by that ever-present electrical glow, but there are more than enough shadows for me to hide in.

Of course, just because the drunks have left the streets doesn’t mean they’re empty. I’ve been moving away from the glowing towers, heading out towards the smaller buildings that are much less well lit. There are people here, in small groups, standing on the street corners with wary looks in their eyes. A couple of them are even armed, with lengths of metal pipe, chains curled around their fists or even a few short handguns tucked into the belt of their pants.

I creep around these figures, slinking through the shadows behind them, clambering over the rooftops or ducking back through the drains and following the flow of water from the rain. Eventually, the number of armed men starts to drop as I leave what must be their territory. The buildings here are squat, with few more than three stories tall, and many are in disrepair, or have been demolished to make way for new growth.

One in particular looms over me; close to three stories of sagging brickwork, the right side of which has partially collapsed into a heap of bricks, concrete and steel. It’s ringed by a fence made from linked strands of steel, covered in signs warning the public of unseen dangers. I can read it, if I use my claws to pull my face up to the sign, but much of it is nonsense to me. ‘Severe Water Damage’ is easy to figure out, as is ‘Unfit for Human Habitation,’ but ‘Asbestos,’ ‘Seattle’ and ‘FEMA’ are complete gibberish to me. I guess I’m just lucky that I can read any of the language at all.

The fence proves no obstacle to me as I slowly slink through the shadows before reforming myself inside the building, well beyond the prying eyes of the city. It’s almost completely pitch black in here, and yet I can somehow see clearly. It’s not the same as seeing light normally, rather it’s like I can somehow make sense of the differing flavours of darkness, in a way that doesn’t quite make sense to me. I’d been seeing parts of it before, but this darkness is somehow clearer than the rest, as if the lack of nearby light makes it more visible to me, rather than less.

The building has obviously seen better days. The walls are cracked and sagging, and the floors are uneven, partially rotted in places. I don’t know what this building was before; maybe it was used for offices, maybe it was a factory or mill of some kind. What matters is that most of the rooms still have all four walls, and the second floor gets me off street level. It might be a nice place to wait out the day, before sneaking off to eat at night. I know I shouldn’t be happy about squatting in an abandoned building, and I shouldn’t enjoy planning nightly raids on general stores, but I’ll take what I can get.

The second floor is largely open plan, with a gaping hole in one end where the building has collapsed in on itself. I stay away from that half – whatever dangers that sign was warning me about are probably over there – and instead pace over to the office on the opposite side. The door has long rotted away, but all the walls are still here and there’s even some glass left in the window. It’s almost a palace!

I spend the night going through the building, room by room, dragging down soft wood scraps and bits of loose canvas until I’ve build myself a passable bed in the corner, deep enough that I can hide in the shadows amongst the scraps if I need to and large enough for me to curl up on top of it. It takes the rest of the night to drag everything down and, by the time I’m done, the first glimmers of sunlight are streaming through the window. I block out the sun with the last scrap of tarpaulin, nailing it into the walls with a few twisted iron rods I found in the next site over. I’m not particularly strong, but the walls here are soft and flaky.

Once the sun’s up, my motivation seems to drain away from me, and I curl up on top of my makeshift bed, pointedly ignoring the way it pokes and prods at me, and drift off into sleep as the tarpaulin over the window keeps the worst of the sun at bay. My dreams are filled with fleeting images that seem to slip away as I try and grasp at them. They are filled with sunlight, but it doesn’t seem so harsh in my mind.

The rotten door creaks and I bolt awake, instinctively slipping into the shadows beneath my bed. It’s not yet dark, but the harsh glare of daylight has been replaced by the fading orange of the evening. I’m well outside the glow, moving about in the shadows of my heap and hoping that nobody saw me.

“Who’s that?”

Drat.

Somebody steps into the room, and my first thought is that he needs a doctor. His face is gaunt, almost skeletal, and his hair is matted and clumped across his head, with a wispy excuse for a beard dusting his chin. He’s dressed in layers of coats and gloves, each worn and ragged, and he’s brandishing a long thin knife in front of him, as his eyes dart madly around the room.

“Don’t fuckin’ hide from me. I know you’re in here!”

He’s stepping closer, and I know he’s going to start tearing up all my hard work to try and find me. He’ll rip the canvas off the window and smash my bed to splinters! I pull myself to the edge of the shadows, and materialise six beady eyes right where he can see them. He stops dead as I start to pull myself after the wood, hoping to scare him off or something. That knife looks sharp – and I really don’t want to get into a fight – but if I can scare him away then maybe he’ll leave me alone?

It works, and he quickly stuffs the knife back into his pocket, raising both his hands up to his head.

“Ah shit! Sorry! I didn’t know you were living here! Don’t hurt me! Please!”

I’m fully formed now, perched on top of my heap, and I glare at him for a few moments before speaking. Shouting, really.

‘Go away!’

That’s not what comes out of my mouth, though. It’s loud, but it doesn’t sound anything like words. It’s halfway between a screech and a snarl, and it breaks my heart to hear it. I can’t talk. I bring my hands, my claws, up to my mouth, pawing and pulling at it as if I can somehow force the words to come out right, force this horrible beak to make some semblance of speech. I don’t want to be alone!

At some point I curl up into a ball, sobbing as I try to rip my jaw off with my bare hands. I think about sinking back into the shadows and never emerging, but then I spot the man still standing on the other side of the room, confusion dancing in his eyes. I look up at him like a little girl with her hand caught in the cookie jar, my hands frozen mid-scratch.

“L-look, I don’t wanna step on any toes here, but I got nowhere else to go. Triad ran me out of my last spot, and this is the only other place I could think of. Either this or Lynnwood, but I ain’t that suicidal. Not yet, at least.”

His mouth cracks open in a strained grin, exposing yellowed and decaying teeth, and I know he’s not afraid of me anymore. If I want to get him out of here, I’d need to fight him. I don’t think I can do that, not to someone I don’t know. I let out a long, drawn out, sigh – at least I can still do that – and nod my head.

“God bless you,” he says, sitting with his back against the wall, “name’s Mike. You got a name?”

I scowl at him, and he seems to get the hint.

“Right, ‘course not.” He sighs, drawing his knees up into his chest, “I got to say, this has to be about the weirdest conversation I’ve ever had while sober.”

I tilt my head in confusion, but he just waves me off. At least we’re communicating, kind of. Maybe I can take this further? There’s plenty of dust on the floor, so I reach over and try to copy the letters I saw outside. I’m pretty sure I know how to write, but it takes a second to figure out how to make the correct symbols with my claws.

‘where we?’

He leans over, tilting his head to read the letters. I’ve written them from my perspective, which means they’re upside down to him, but I’m sure he’ll figure it out.

“Where are we?”

I nod.

“I think it was a clothing factory?”

I tap the words twice, before pointing towards the covered window.

“Oh, shit. You really don’t know?” my stare speaks for me, “Guess not. This is Seattle.”

I draw my finger through half of my statement, before quickly writing another word.

‘where we? that?’

He brings his fingers up to his chin, scratching at his wispy beard.

“Washington State?”

I tap the words again.

“The USA?”

Another tap.

“Earth Bet?”

My taps are more desperate now.

“You’re not an alien, are you? ‘Cos that’s about as big as it gets.”

I bring my hands up to my head again. Not a single flash of recognition, not one stray memory of vague feeling of familiarity. I don’t recognise anything about it, which means I really am lost. I slip into the shadows again, peering out of the somewhat-soft mass of rotten wood and canvas I’ve been using as a bed, which sends Mike scampering back again. He can’t manage it, not when he was already leaning against the wall, so his fear slowly turns into curiosity, as I peer out of the shadows at him.

“Damn,” he sighs, “you have to be the weirdest cape I’ve ever seen.”

I push an arm out of the shadows, reaching over to my scribbled words.

‘what where we? that?’

“Capes? Capes are… Capes are people, I guess, who can do extraordinary things. They can build things, or shoot balls of gas from their arms, or grow enormous stone fortresses. Heh. Or merge into shadows.”

So I’m not alone! It feels like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders, but I still need to be sure. I reach out with my hand, one more time.

‘people like me?’

“Not quite,” he winces, and my heart breaks all over again, “they still look like people. I’m sorry,” he says, as I form my beady eyes to stare him down, “but it’s true. There are a few capes who look a little odd when they’re using their power, but nobody like you. Sorry.”

None of us speak after that, not like I have a choice in the matter. Eventually, Mike steps out of the makeshift office, dragging his sleeping bag to some other part of the old factory. I wait until the sun goes down, occupying myself by doodling idly in the dust, before crawling out into the night yet again.

This time I stay away from the city centre. From ‘Seattle.’ I stick to the side streets and alleyways, watching from the shadows as people go about their daily lives. I spot a fistfight on the side of the street between, two burly men going at each other with bare knuckles, but I just ignore it and walk away. Conversation pours from bars so full that the drinking has spilled out onto the street, and more drinkers arrive for every one that leaves. At one point, another one of those grey vans drives past, following a pair of light-blue cars with a white stripe along their side, and blue and red flashing lights on top.

The light of one of these cars passes over my shadow, and I am instantly forced back into my physical form, panting heavily as I slink off into deeper into the city. Women in absurd clothing make passes at passing cars, outside a section of the city bathed in a deep red light that creates absolutely marvellous shadows. There are a lot more fights in that part of town, as burly men in black shirts cooperate to drag a myriad of drunken people out of the area. I spot two of them flanking a man in a neatly-pressed suit with a violet shirt and tie, talking to a strangely-dressed woman in a tight-fitting black and orange outfit, with an orange mask across the top of her face. She seems to have the respect of the man, and something else that could be fear or awe.

Eventually, I find my way to another well-lit general store, and creep in through the shadow underneath the door itself. I sneak myself food from the entire shop, more sandwiches and drinks and loose fruit, until I’ve eaten my fill. I’m about to sneak out again, until I remember how gaunt Mike looked. I double back, retrieving a few things, and push the door open rather than slipping under it. Nobody sees me this time.

I find him in a room on the first floor of the warehouse – he seems to have written off the whole second floor as my territory – curled up in a sleeping bag on top of a bed made from a couple of steel tables he’s pushed together. He’s still awake, so I rest my claws on the table to pull myself up and use my hands to place my haul in front of him. He smiles at me, eagerly consuming the sandwich and bottled drink, but I have to pointedly tap the apple before he pays any attention to it.

“An apple a day, huh? Look at you,” he smiles, “thinkin’ of my health.”

I wait pointedly for him to finish, before letting myself drop to the floor and slinking off to the doorway.

“You know,” I pause and look back at him, “I think this is that start of a wonderful partnership.”

I don’t really know what he means, but it feels nice to know there’s someone here who won’t scream and run when they see me. I smile, as I slink back out into the night.


	3. Vagrant: 1.03

My nights fall into a steady rhythm. I wake as the evening drags on, then meander around the old factory until the sun has completely set, and the streets of the city turn dark enough to be comfortable. Sometimes Mike will be around, and we’ll ‘talk’ until he heads off to sleep and I head out into the city. I still don’t know what he does, when he isn’t here, but there’s something I like about the regularity he provides. I know he’ll be there when I get back. We don’t talk about much – there’s only so much dust to draw in – but it’s nice to have someone explain the things I don’t get, like traffic lights or pedestrian crossings. That one took some drawing before he understood.

Then I’ll creep out and go for a wander. I’m not so hungry as to slink off to the nearest shop right away. Instead, I take the chance to explore the city some more. To explore Seattle, I suppose. It seems too big for a name, though. It feels like the city covers the whole world, reaching high up into the heavens. It might as well be the world, as far as I’m concerned; I’ve travelled east, west and south, and it’s bordered on all sides by enormous expanses of dark water, separated from the city by immense angular fortifications of concrete that rises up four stories tall in places.

I tried swimming, then gliding through the shadows, and found that I can travel through dark water as easily as I can through dark air. Helpful to know, but I didn’t go very far. Why would I, when this city seems to hold the whole world within its borders? I could spend months, maybe years, exploring it, and never fully understand it. I don’t need to add more places onto that, not when I have no connection to them anyway. Seattle is the whole world, because it’s the only place I have any ties to.

That being said, I still don’t understand it. The water to the south is smaller than the west and east, a mere channel with a lake at the centre, but I haven’t crossed the bridge yet. That’s where all the skyscrapers – a fitting name – are and I still hate to look at them. They frighten me, like they could come crashing down at any moment. A lot of things frighten me here. I haven’t gone north yet; Mike says it’s dangerous up there, and I haven’t any reason to doubt him.

Instead I’ve been learning everything I can about our own little patch of the city: watching people as they spill out of work and head straight for the bar; watching, however briefly, the people in the Red Light District, as they look for alternative ways to relieve stress; watching the shows of force from the local gangs, or the black-uniformed soldiers who patrol the better parts of the neighbourhood with pistols on their belts. There are thousands of people here, perhaps tens of thousands. All of them individuals, with their own stories. I like to guess sometimes, as I look out of the shadows, who each of them is. I’ll never get it right, but it’s not like I can just walk up and ask them.

Most of the shops close at midnight – at least the ones that sell food – so I usually try and raid them pretty early on as I have no way of telling the time. I like to think I’ve gotten pretty good at hiding underneath the shelves, and I now know a couple of places where the shelves are far enough off the floor for me to eat my meal without revealing myself. I’ve only been seen a few times, and almost always on my way out. I can’t carry anything in the shadows, but sometimes I’ll take a few things back with me the long way. Those nights are more dangerous, but I’m pretty hard to spot even outside the shadows.

Sometimes I bring back food for Mike, as I know he won’t eat fruit if I don’t get it for him, but more recently I’ve been bringing back some extras just for me. I found an electronics store, once; at first it scared me, with its walls filled with glowing screens emitting harsh light from moving images, but eventually my curiosity overcame me. That was the night I discovered I could move through darkness even if there was glass in the way. It doesn’t seem possible, but who am I to argue?

The shop was shuttered and closed, and all the boxes by the front had thankfully gone dark. I couldn’t make sense of any of it; strange boxes and panes of glass that somehow made the images I had seen. There was only one product that was even vaguely recognisable to me. I pawed over the radio, trying to figure out how to switch it on before jumping back as it crackled into life. I spent another few minutes fiddling with the frequency until the room was filled by wonderful music. Completely unrecognisable to me, of course, but music all the same.

The only trouble was in getting back; I couldn’t carry the radio back through the glass door and I didn’t want to cut myself trying to batter it down, so I turned my eye to the shop itself. I chose a heavy black case highlighted in green – serving no function I could determine – to smash through the glass, before sliding my precious radio through the gap between the shutter and the ground.

Part of me felt guilty, but it was overshadowed by my prize. I spend the rest of that night flicking through stations back in the factory, listening to dozens of different sorts of music, interspersed with late night talk shows and far too many adverts for things I couldn’t understand. It was a nice way to pass the time, and I came to love the gentle sound of music in my room. Sometimes Mike came up to listen with me, and that was nice as well.

Tonight is about saving that radio. It died on me last night. I was distraught, until Mike told me that all it needed were new batteries. Now, after having the difference between A, AA, and AAA explained to me in exhausting detail, I’m on the hunt yet again. I can’t go down to the same store again – it’s not smart – so I’m just prowling the city looking for something else that fits the bill.

I decide to combine it with a quick jaunt up north, to see what exactly has Mike so scared. It’s not like I can’t just duck into the shadows if I see anything bad happening. So far, the north looks a lot like the rest of the area, if a little more run-down. There are fewer streetlights here, and fewer people out at night. Not enough for it to be quiet, but enough for it to be noticeable. The people who are out are a lot less eager to make some noise; crawling between the bars and their homes without fanfare or celebration.

Still, they have a small corner shop that’s open this late and might have what I need. I creep through the door while the shopkeeper is busy with a customer, then hide under the shelves until I’m sure he didn’t notice the door opening. I creep around for a while, making sure that nobody else is inside, before reforming myself in the aisle and looking over the shelves for any batteries. There’s nothing on this isle – just tools and boxes – and I duck back into the shadows as a couple of customers step in.

I wait while they look up and down the aisle I’m hiding under, before a series of distant cracks has them glancing around in panic. The cracks increase in volume; I’d have my hands over my ears if I had either of those right now. The two customers start to huddle together and I spot the owner pull a short-barrelled gun out from underneath his counter. None of them make an effort to leave, and there’s no way I’m getting out with them all spooked like this. Mike says some capes are bulletproof, but I’m not eager to test that.

Outside the glass front of the store, the street is suddenly illuminated by flashing blue lights as a trio of grey vans speed past, one of them stopping right outside as a squad of grey-uniformed soldiers file out, carrying short-looking rifles made entirely of black metal. The crackling din – which I now assume is gunfire – increases as it’s joined by tremendous crashes and bangs.

Suddenly there’s a figure at the door, and the customers shrink back. Their demeanour changes when he steps in, however, and they start to seem somehow reassured, He doesn’t look like the soldiers – a short man, possibly a teenager, dressed in an armoured suit of steel scales with a mask across the top half of his face – but the customers are almost deferential to him, and the shopkeeper has lowered his gun.

“You need to evacuate.” He says, his voice filled with authority. “There’s a police cordon a block to the south, it’s safe there.”

The two customers leave immediately, thanking him as they go, but the shopkeeper is reluctant, and the two descend into a polite but fierce argument. I seize the chance, forming my body in the aisle and looking over the shelves for those cursed batteries. I paw through gardening equipment and cleaning products, before spotting a rack of batteries on the top of the shelf. They’re too high for me to reach, so I use my claws to ‘stand’ on two legs while leaning against the shelf, and reach up with my other set of arms for the batteries. I’ve almost got them, but I’m struggling to keep my balance.

“What the…”

My right eyes dart to the side only to see the shopkeeper and the cape on their way out the door, both staring right at me. The cape reaches out with his right hand, while a number of scales detach from his armour and start to circle around him.

“Don’t. Move.”

He says each word slowly, his eyes locked on my own. My tail sways from side to side nervously as the shopkeeper points his gun at me, aiming over the cape’s shoulder. My tail strays briefly into the shadows underneath the shelves and I pull on that connection, dragging myself into the shadows underneath the shelf as a gunshot rings out. I rush through the shadow, leaping out of the other end of the shelves and bursting through the door, my tail brushing up against the cape’s legs. He wheels on the spot, more scales detaching from his armour, but I’m already sprinting down the street.

The grey van is still parked outside and its flashing blue lights don’t give me anywhere to hide. I hear the cape talking into a radio behind me, and duck into the shadow underneath the van before leaping out onto the other side. Shouts emerge from behind me, as soldiers respond to the cape’s warnings. They don’t shoot at me, but it sounds like there are a lot of them. The crackling gunfire reverberates through the streets ahead of me, but I’d rather sneak my way past the unknown than try to evade that cape on a street bathed in blue light.

I start to see signs of the fight. A uniformed soldier leads a line of civilians towards safety, before turning back for more. A soldier jogs past me carrying his wounded comrade over his shoulder. I start to hear shouts through the gunfire, mixed in with strange whirring noises. Then, I see it. The street ahead is teaming with soldiers shooting off into the distance, hiding in alleyways or clambering over the rooftops. In the centre of the road an enormous armoured suit, as wide as it is tall, is striding through the concrete. I watch from the shadows as bullets spark and ricochet off its plates, but the armoured figure weathers the storm as it strides down the street, the soldiers moving up behind it as they lay down a withering stream of fire.

I creep past them, slinking through the shadows and taking care to avoid being exposed by the flash of gunfire. That’s when I catch my first glimpse of the other side; a trio of strange flying machines, about as large as a human torso and supported by whirring engines that defy comprehension. They fly into the street, blasting away at the armoured suit with machine guns suspended beneath their chassis.

The cape effortlessly raises her immense gauntlets, letting loose a spray of sparks that collide with the machines and send them shooting back into the buildings, where they crash into and through the brickwork. The suit is almost artful as it dances amongst the contraptions, as if it is somehow mocking their inelegant flight with its poise.

In short order, the three machines have been dealt with and the soldiers double their advance. I speed ahead of them, shifting into the alleyways and leaping up to the shadowed rooftops, bounding from building to building until a bright flare is fired into the sky, driving me back down to earth.

That’s when I see some more of the other side; ragged figures dressed in oily green ponchos to protect them from the rain. Few of them are carrying rifles, and most are laden down with looted electronics or scrap metal. Their movements are shambling and unnatural, and the few faces I can see are gaunt and unhealthy. A scream draws my attention, and I see a man being dragged through an alleyway by one of these figures, as if he weighed no more than a sack of grain.

Caution wars with emotion in my mind, but in the end I decide I can’t just watch them drag him off. I slip into the shadows behind the shambling figure, moving from side to side as I try to find some way of approaching this that won’t end up with me dead. His waterproof poncho gives me an idea; its surface is treated and water-tight. I get as close to him as I can in the shadows then, when the opportunity presents itself, slide into the shadows beneath his poncho, going from following him to being carried by him.

I don’t wait, instead materialising all my limbs as I push aside the poncho, wrapping them around him in a death grip that has him twitching and writing. He keeps moving, putting only the smallest effort into fighting me off. I tighten my grip, driving claws and talons into his body while scraping away at his skin with my fingers. It doesn’t work. In desperation, I open my mouth wide and bite down on his neck, tearing out a lump of flesh that I immediately spit out in disgust. He bleeds, less blood than I feel there should be, and falls to his knees before collapsing entirely.

I roll him onto his back, as the captive takes one look at me and runs, and see eyes that were dead long before I got here. Strange steel devices have been stapled into his face, and one of his eyes has been replaced with some kind of camera. There’s something deeply uncomfortable about the sight, about the way his skin has been so causally parted to make room for these abominations, and I start to wonder if he was still alive when the surgery was performed?

I hear footsteps shambling towards me and slip into the shadows just before two more horrors round the corner, pistols clutched in their hands as they scan blindly over their fallen comrade. Their eyes are dead, just like his. The gunfire creeps closer, and I decide I have seen quite enough of the city for one night. I travel southwest until I can’t hear the gunfire anymore, and sneak down familiar streets filled with familiar people. I don’t look for another store, instead heading straight back to the Factory. Back home.

Mike is asleep, and we have no light for him to see by, so I force down my questions for now and creep back up to my room. I’ve made it more homely over recent days, and my most prised possession is spread out across the floor. It’s a carpet, with a beautifully woven pattern and luxuriously soft fibres. It covers much of the water damaged floors, and has been well worth the considerable effort I expended in bringing it here. I’ve draped a similar rug over my bed, and it is now softer and more comfortable than ever before. As I lay there, staring at my broken radio, I cannot help but think of the grey eyes of that man.

To think that such horrors could exist in a city that also holds such beauty, such life. Truly, this city is the entire world. It is bordered on the east and west by the sea, and on the south by towers tall enough to scrape the heavens. The north, in comparison, is the underworld. Only the dead dwell there.


	4. Vagrant: 1.04

I grow bolder every day, as the city and I draw closer. I feel like I’m part of it now, even if I still don’t understand it. I start to move faster, taking greater risks and spending more and more time outside the shadows. I’ll sprint along the rooftops, leaping across narrow alleyways with my tail swinging out behind me. When there’s a larger gap, I’ll slip into the shadowed rooftop and accelerate, launching myself across the streets faster and farther than I could ever have jumped. I merge straight into the shadows on the next roof over, like a salmon leaping in and out of a stream.

One time, there were no shadows on the opposite roof and I landed gracefully on all fours before immediately tripping, rolling and stumbling along the hard surface like a fish out of water. I was scraped and bruised, but otherwise unharmed. Turns out the tissue and blood beneath my skin is as black as the rest of me, and I only realised I was bleeding when I saw a pool of inky black liquid on the roof beneath my left leg. Guess I didn’t get super-healing along with the amnesia…

This time, the shadows are there and I slip gracefully into them before reforming myself on the rooftop. My favourite hobby is still people-watching, but I’m a little bolder about it now. I’ll get closer, clawing up under handbags or slipping beneath coats and clothing. I listen in on their conversations, and start to wonder what it would be like to be them. Who would I be, if I wasn’t this? Would I care about the stuff they do? About insurance or work or college or whatever the topic of discussion is?

More importantly, why do I know about how salmon swim upstream when there are no salmon in the city? Why don’t I know about the things that concern these people? I know I’ll probably never have answers to that, and it’s weighing on my mind. Sometimes I find myself acting on instinct, then wondering where those instincts came from.

In the end, though, I always push my doubts to the back of my mind. It’s like the world outside Seattle. Sure, it exists, but I’m never going to see it. Instead, I focus on the small things, like the smell of spices from the streets below. I slip down a drainpipe, pouring myself out at the bottom before sprinting into the shadows behind a row of stalls.

The market is lit by hanging lanterns, cheap electric lights and the odd streetlight poking through the shadows. It’s raining, and the stall keepers have secured themselves beneath raised tarpaulins to create an enclosed space inside what looks like a ruined warehouse that’s been gutted and cleared. It doesn’t keep all the water out – there are occasional streams pouring through holes in the tarpaulin – but it does the job well enough. The whole place is poorly lit, but with a warmth and an intimacy created by the enclosed space.

My kind of place.

The first thing I notice, when I reform myself out of sight, is the smell. The air practically hums with the scents of dozens, hundreds, of different spices mingling with curries cooked in enormous metal tubs, meats sizzling on flat surfaces of heated metal and the tantalising smell of fresh meat and fish from further in the covered market. I’m floating on a bouquet of sensations, and I slip from shadow to shadow pausing only to sneak a taste off something nice. I’ve never tasted anything quite like this before. I mean, obviously, but it feels like so much more than that. Other food has been unfamiliar, but comforting whereas this feels like something utterly new.

The market heaves with people, from all walks of life. There are the stallkeeps, of course, dressed in aprons or hats as they shout their wares to the sky. The customers are more varied, some gangsters in a myriad of local colours, their only concession to their overlords a light blue sash shared by all the different gangs. They’re not acting out, though. Out on the streets, I’d often see two different gangs fighting each other over territory.

The Triad doesn’t care, not so long as they still offer tribute and follow orders. Seems like this place is different, though. Here the criminals can rub shoulders with the businessmen without fear of getting mugged or attacked. There’s a sign near the entrance, painted in three languages onto a wooden board. It says ‘we have a one-strike policy for pickpockets and thieves’, and there’s a crude picture of some guy with a sword cutting another man’s hand off.

I sneak about the place, hiding under tables and in the shadows of people’s clothing. Sometimes I’ll hear a gasp, or someone will stop suddenly, but they never see me for long enough to convince themselves that it’s anything more than their eyes playing tricks. I’ve gotten quite good at staying unseen even amongst the busiest crowds. It’s not perfect, of course, but it’s good enough.

I spend hours here, creeping around in the shadows or slipping up through the holes in the tarpaulin and tiptoeing across the support beams. I’m surprisingly light for my size, and can move utterly silently even outside of the shadows. Eventually I stagger out, drunk on gluttony and pilfered alcohol that I think was made from rice, of all things. Some part of me feels guilty about drinking, so I don’t do it that often, but it helps when I get a little too introspective. It helps bring me back to the here and now, even if it means I sometimes stagger a little when I walk. Lucky indeed that my shadow state isn’t affected.

I slip off into the night, away from all the sounds and smells, and sneak down the side of the street, stretching out my tail to bridge the gap between shadows. I pass a one-handed beggar, huddling out of the rain beneath a stone doorway, and duck into an alleyway before soaring up a drainpipe, past a steady stream of cascading water, and emerge onto the roof, pausing to take in the smell of the rain before sprinting off into the night. I lose myself in the sensation of rain running along my skin as I leap from rooftop to rooftop, before a muted shout has me scrambling to a halt.

I creep to the lip of the roof, peering down into a dark alleyway set back from a well-lit bar. There are three people in the alleyway: a man and a woman dressed in business clothing, and another man shrouded in the darkness, carrying a long knife. The couple are clinging to each other, shuffling backwards ever so slightly while fumbling about in their pockets and purse for money. I lean closer, wondering what I should do, when something strikes me about the third man. I drop down silently onto the fire escape and start to clamber down the metal rungs, not bothering to hide myself. As I get closer, I see more of the figure. His face is hidden from me by the hood of his coat, and he’s wearing a tattered green overcoat.

I’ve seen that coat before.

I draw closer, and see the couple’s eyes widen as they catch sight of me, before they scream and sprint off into the night, the woman slipping out of her heeled shoes in her efforts to escape. The other man looks startled, before slowly turning with his knife raised up protectively in front of his face. Mike’s jaw drops when he sees me, and his arm drops back down to his side. His eyes dart around furtively, looking anywhere except at me, as the din from the bar drops in volume.

“What are you doing here,” he asks, almost dreamily, before his eyes snap back onto me with a calculated expression.

“Never mind.” He says, his eyes darting towards the open end of the alleyway. “Somebody probably heard that scream. Drop the fire escape for me, would ya?”

I hesitate for only a second before moving forwards again, pressing my bodyweight against the last set of stairs until it swings down on springs and taps the ground below. Mike follows me up, his steps heavy and lumbering when compared to my soft grace, and we both scramble onto the rooftop. I turn, pressing a hand against his chest when he tries to keep going, and tilt my head in an unspoken question.

“Look…” he sighs, “I can explain, but can we at least get out of the rain?”

I nod, leading him across a narrow gab between two buildings before heading back down a different fire escape. We take shelter underneath the lip of a building; he sits down on an abandoned packing crate while I perch myself on top of a dumpster, looking down at him. His eyes are fixed firmly on the ground, and the knife is still in his hands. I rap a claw twice against the metal dumpster, bringing his eyes back up to me, and tilt my head yet again. His shoulders slump in resignation as he starts to talk.

“I used to live up in Everett. I was just starting to get on my feet. I’d got my GED and a job at an auto repair shop. The pay wasn’t great, but the work was steady and I was pretty good at it. I was eighteen in two thousand and three, and things were starting to look up.”

A wry smile plays briefly across his face, though I don’t know if it’s because of fond memories or some bitter irony.

“It’s all gone now, of course. My home got swept away, and my work got crushed by a chunk of the Pacific Wall. There wasn’t any space for me in the refugee camps, so I ended up joining a crew of guys and we started hitting the FEMA convoys on their way in. I’d fought before, but this was different. We were animals, desperate, vicious animals.”

He turns the knife over in his hand, and the silvery metal glints in the light. It’s the only thing he owns that’s kept clean. I’d sometimes see him sharpening it against a stone, but I thought nothing of it. I thought it was a tool, but he clearly doesn’t see it that way.

“It took six months for them to get the power back on, but they never bothered with that part of the coast. Just rebuilt further inland. By that time, I had a record, and I wasn’t going to be let in on any of the housing schemes. Things got worse from there, and eventually I ended up right here.”

There’s no anger in his words, just resignation. I start to wonder what could have caused all this, but I know better than to ask him. Some wounds should stay closed.

“Every night, I remember life was like back then. I never really focused on the future, but I was happy enough with what I had. Now I’m twenty-five, but I look like I’m forty. I’ve been run out of every part of town, and I’m only safe now because I’m in the same building as a cape.”

He folds the knife up, putting it in his pocket, and meets my eyes for the first time.

“I’m just tired of it all. I just… I need money. I need it for food, I need it for clothes, I need it to cope with everything that’s going on. To get through the night.”

And with that, he breaks. He puts his head in his hands, and just stares down at the ground. What he’s doing is wrong, but I can’t find it in me to be angry with him, not when I still know so little about him. I wait there for a while, watching him, and try to uncover who he is. In the end, I can’t decide. There’s nothing for me to draw on, no point of familiarity. My life began in that alleyway, so how can I understand someone who remembers all of it? Who’s been made by it?

After a while, he looks up, but I’ve already gone.

The night drags on, and the streets start to clear. I return to the market, only to find the stores all packed up and the site shuttered and padlocked. The smell still lingers, so I sneak in and lay there for a while, immersing myself in the scent of spices and fish and frying meats. I’m sure I smell awful by the time I leave, so I take a quick dip into the river and swim out into the bay.

I spend a little longer there this time, moving effortlessly through the murky darkness of the water. I can still ‘see’, in muted shades of grey, and so I crawl along the base of the bay, looking for interesting finds. I move through shoals of fish without disturbing them, and pass sunken ships or loose scraps of building material. I spot crabs clambering sideways through the silt, and look up at the passing silhouette of a boat overhead.

Something looms ahead of me in the water, and I travel closer. It seems like some ancient monolith, dark and angular, covered in kelp and hosting whole shoals of fishes. I can’t tell how tall it is, and it looks like there’s even more buried beneath the silt, but if I had to guess I’d put it at the height of a five-story building. It’s an immense shape, built of sturdy concrete that’s been pockmarked and worn by time. I move around the structure, noting sections of crumbling concrete where it seems to have been torn away from its mountings. That’s when it clicks.

I’ve seen this before, dozens of blocks like this, all along the shoreline of the city. I don’t know if this one is from a second wall further out, but something tore it free and slammed it into the harbour, just like how something tore through Mike’s old neighbourhood, and put him out onto the streets. I can’t imagine the effort it would take to move something this immense, but I find more of them as I swim out into sea. The surface of the harbour is littered with chunks of concrete, old artillery pieces, racks that may have held rockets and even a few chunks from what I can only assume were aeroplanes.

There are corpses too; old skeletons picked clean by the silt and the fish and left to lie at the bottom of the ocean. They’re hard to spot, blending in to the rocks and sand, and their sudden appearance sends me into a panic. Sometimes I’ll be looking at a patch of rocks, or into the wreckage of some vehicle, only to spot a skull peering back at me. My curiosity turns cold, and I travel back to the shoreline, determined to leave the dead to their rest.

As I haul myself up the immense sea wall, I can’t help but think about the concrete monoliths scattered just below the surface. I look out over the bay with fresh eyes, spotting long lines of flashing red lights that chart a safe path through the wreckage. A cargo ship weaves its way through, immensely long and piled high with steel containers in a myriad of colours, all tainted with red rust.

I turn away from the sea and drop off the edge of the curtain wall, freefalling for a few blissful moments before slipping into the shadows. With a little more context, my understanding of the city deepens. I understand the barren north now, why it’s home to the desperate and the restless dead, just as I understand why the south hides itself away behind fortress walls. They survived the calamity, whatever it was, and they’re determined to keep surviving. Just like Mike, in their own way.

I pass another fight on my way back; a dozen gangsters with light-blue armbands fighting against another group. They’re brawling with chains and lengths of pipe, vicious and short fights before being blindsided by another hit. Near the back of one group, one of the gangsters turns and runs, clutching a brown paper bag in his hands.

There’s the crack of a gunshot, and the losing gang scatters to the winds as a stocky man in a tank top, with a light-blue scarf covering the bottom half of his face, steps forwards and fires again towards the man with the brown paper bag. He’s hit, and the bag flies from his hand, scattering green scraps of paper all over the street. Some of them land near me, and I sneak out a hand to grab some.

I slink back to the factory after a few more hours, scrabbling unsteadily over the chain-link fence, and push aside the rotten wooden board we’ve been using as a door. I look into Mike’s room, seeing him curled up in his sleeping bag, his knife jammed by the blade into the wall. I reach into my pilfered carrier bag, taking out the small number of green bills, still soggy from the rain, and placing them beside him. I put an apple next to them, and turn my attention to my own room upstairs, pushing aside the tarpaulin I hung over the window and looking out towards the glowing yellow towers at the city centre.


	5. Vagrant: 1.05

Red light fills the street, projected from dozens of lamps hung above doorways, or strung from great lines that crisscross the street. It gives this part of the city a warm, almost intimate, atmosphere that leaves behind the deepest shadows. Red light bleeds less, and seems to only heighten the darkness rather than creep into it. It would be nicer still, if it wasn’t for what goes on here. Something about the people here makes me feel distinctly uncomfortable, even as the environment feels pleasant.

I think it’s the customers, more than the streetwalkers. There’s just something slightly off about them, a distinct sense of wrongness that I can’t quite put my finger on. They act a little differently to the people in the rest of the city: they’re furtive, where others are confident, or boisterous where others would be professional. The vice brings out something in each of them. It might be a false self, bravado put on to work themselves up to this, or it might be their true self, free from inhibition. Either way, the air feels different here because of it.

I’m huddling in the shadows beneath the overhang of a set of large bay windows, displaying a richly furnished velvet room and a sparsely-clothed dancer. There are fewer dumpsters on this street, and the area is closed off to wheeled traffic, so my options are more than a little limited. Across from me, a three-story building has been converted from its original purpose. Its brickwork has been painted black, while all the woodwork, the doors and windowsills, have been redone in gaudy pink. Enormous pink letters stretch across the front of the building, glowing tubes of glass spelling out the place’s name. ‘A Streetwalker Named Desire.’ If it’s referencing something, then I don’t get it.

The building is not alone, pretty much every place in this part of town looks the same, but I’ve had my eye on it for a while. It’s one of the largest of its type, possibly the largest, and it sees a lot of customers every night. More importantly, it’s on the edge of the district and backs right onto a warren of tenements and alleyways. It’s also a little more upmarket than the others, which means it’s more expensive. I’ve been in there once before, clinging to the coattails of one of the staff, but this time it’s different. This time it’s the real thing.

I look left and right, sizing up the people on the street. The woman, and a few men, who work here aren’t I’m looking for. I want someone who looks decently well off, but not so drunk that they’ll jump into the arms of the first place they see. I want someone purposeful, who looks like they know where they’re going. Someone… Someone like him.

He’s wearing a charcoal-grey suit that looks expensive, but his collar is undone and his tie is hanging loose. He’s done with work for the day, and has relaxed his fashions accordingly. I understand people a bit more now, I know what clothes they wear to work, what clothes they wear for leisure, and the subtle adjustments they make to the former when they seek some small leisure at the end of the day. He’s walking on my side of the street, but his eyes are fixed o the building opposite. He’s young, but not so young he’d be trying his luck in a bar. His curly hair is neatly trimmed, and his rich brown skin is smooth and well cared for.

He looks, in short, like he’s heading exactly where I need to go.

I wait for him to wander close to my hiding spot, then let my tail drift out of the shadows and push against the tail of his jacket, making brief contact with the underside. That’s enough for me to pull my presence beneath his jacket, into the narrow band of shadows on top of his shirt. I pause for a moment, waiting to hear screams or shouts, or for him to violently try and shake me off. Nothing happens, and I know I’ve passed completely unseen.

I shift myself down his jacket, until I’m suspended in the narrow gap between the tail and his pants, then peer down at the ground as he crosses the street. The flat concrete of the pavement drops down onto the road, and he crosses over the faded white line that used to guide traffic before lurching up again onto the pavement on the other side. There’s a pause as he waits briefly at the door, before being waved through by a pair of polished black boots belonging to a hired thug. The featureless grey concrete is replaced briefly by a wooden doorframe, then by a patterned red carpet.

My unwitting guide pauses before a polished wooden desk, and holds a brief conversation with an unseen woman before I hear the metal sound of a case being opened, and the expectant quiet of money changing hands. The man starts to walk away, into the backrooms, and I let my tail slip from his jacket, using it to pull myself into the shadows beneath a decorative pedestal holding a strange plant made of fake green leaves.

I watch the charcoal grey suit step behind a heavy wooden door, and put him out of my mind. From my last visit, I know what he’ll find in there; a number of women and a few men arranged in a line like cattle at an auction. What he’ll do next frankly doesn’t bear thinking about, and it’s not why I’m here. My interest is strictly on the desk. There’s a woman sitting at it, in a short red dress, but she’s nothing compared to the desk itself. It’s made of a richly varnished wood, and its legs and panels bear curving patterns that are pleasing to the eye. It’s not half as pleasing, however, as the simple case made of black metal that sits on top of the desk.

As I watch, another customer comes in, dressed in a tan overcoat. He greets the woman with a smile, and she reciprocates before listing a few prices. The numbers are a lot larger than I’m used to, but the customer doesn’t seem phased. He simply smiles again, makes some half-witty jest that has the woman laughing sycophantically, and pulls out a number of green bills from his wallet. I have seen a few people paying for things with a small card, but I can’t figure out how that works and Mike isn’t interested in those anyway. In a place like this, however, everybody pays in cash.

More customers come, and a few leave looking significantly less put-together. The woman greets those ones with a half-friendly half-sarcastic ‘see you soon’ as they leave. I just wait, as the tin slowly fills up with all manner of notes. It doesn’t take long for the woman to start looking furtively into the tin, before she pushes a small button underneath her desk, one of several.

A few minutes later, a man enters the room from inside the building. He’s dressed a little more flamboyantly then the customers, in a white suit with a bright purple shirt, and he greets the woman like a friend, rather than a client. He has to walk past me to get to her, and I take in the sight of his neatly polished shoes, and expensive watch. He’s the owner, or someone important, rather than a security guard. That’s a good sign. He picks up the full tin, replacing it with an empty one, and, with a few parting words to the woman behind the desk, starts to make his way back into the building. As he passes, I slip my tail from my hiding place and brush against his jacket, pulling myself onto his back and leaving him none the wiser.

More carpets pass, and another set of black shoes that must belong to a guard, before he passes through a door and into an area that’s been left bare and unadorned, with a floor of boards of wood. He ascends a flight of stairs that seem to be tucked away into the side of the building, and emerges into a small cluster of rooms. I wait for my chance, before slipping into the folds of a white wool coat hanging from a hook on the wall. I manoeuvre myself until I can peer out of the folds of the jacket.

Compared to the opulence of the public areas, the office is positively barren. The wallpaper is chipped and fading, likely left over from whatever this place was before, and the floor is simply rough wooden boards, plain and utilitarian. The desk is far simpler than the magnificent spectacle in the entrance and it is almost the only furniture in the room. No sofas, no luxurious armchairs, just a simple chair set behind the desk and a set of shelves holding ledgers.

I watch from the shadows as the owner of ‘Desire’ takes a seat behind the desk, running his hand through his hair before opening up the small tin case, placing it next to a much larger briefcase made of silver metal. He opens up a ledger, and starts to transfer cash from the smaller case to the larger, nothing down amounts into his leather-bound book with a fine fountain pen of wood and gold. The luxury of it looks more than a little out of place.

The work doesn’t take him long, and he places the empty tin onto the shelves after securing the silver case with a heavy padlock. He doesn’t leave, instead settling down with a paperback novel. Eventually, he seems to have a stab of conscience and gets up to check on his club. I wait until I hear the click of a lock in the door before slipping out of my hiding spot, forming myself onto the rough wooden boards. I immediately pace up to the desk, pawing at the metal case with my claws. It doesn’t open, but I wasn’t expecting it to. I can just hit it against something when I’m back home until either the case or the lock breaks.

I don’t know how much money is in here, but I know it’s a lot. It thrills me to think about Mike’s expression when I give it to him. I’ve been bringing him some more money after I chanced upon that fight a few nights ago, and he’s been giving me some advice on where to find more. It makes me happy, to see him happy. I like it when he smiles, when he rubs my head or scratches my neck. We were distant before, two people sharing a building without meaningfully interacting, but now it’s like we’re trusted friends. He needs more, though. He always needs more, and I’m happy to bring it to him in exchange for a little attention, and the sure knowledge that I can help him rebuild what he has lost.

All that leaves me with is the dilemma of how to bring this case back to him. It’s heavy, but not so heavy I can’t carry it. What matters more, however, is that it’s unwieldy and I can’t bring it through the shadows with me. I can’t even take it out through the door, not now that it’s been locked. I try to open the window, only to find a small lock on that as well. For a while, I debate whether to throw the case at the window and hope it breaks. I put that idea aside for later, and start to go through the shelves and the desk. As luck would have it, there’s a small key on top of the shelves that fits perfectly into the window. I push it open, struggling a little against the stiff frame, before letting in a cool breeze from the city.

I poke my head out, looking down into a dark alleyway, and smile. There’s a dumpster a little off from the window, and whoever last opened it forgot to close the lid. I pick the case up from the desk, carrying it over to the window before throwing it out into the alleyway, just barely landing it on top of the black sacks of refuse. I follow it down, turning into shadow to break my fall, and haul it out of the dumpster, brushing off a few chunks of half-rotten food.

I sprint off into the alleyway, keeping to the shadows even if I can’t merge with them, and I start to feel a familiar sense of elation as I move. My good mood infects my steps, and I start to skip and spring through the back streets of the city, turning off to move away from the red-light district. That’s when I see her, stepping out from a recessed doorway and putting herself right in my path. I skid to a halt and start to turn and run, before she shouts.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Something in her tone has me stop in my tracks, and I look back at her to see a thing tube held in her hand.

“This is a flare. I’m sure you’re familiar with how much light this thing puts out, in case you were thinking of slipping away.”

She pauses for a moment, before shaking her head and continuing in a markedly different tone.

“Look, believe it or not I’m not here to hurt you. It’s just that,” she points the unlit flare at the case in my hands, “belongs to someone. It’s the profits of a perfectly legal business, and a lot of people’s wages are in that case. So why don’t you hand it over, and we forget this ever happened?”

I hesitate only for a moment before pacing forwards slowly. As I get closer, I start to see her more clearly. She’s wearing a form-fitting outfit of black material, flared with orange, and the top half of her dark face is covered by an orange mask. Her long hair flows freely behind her, and there’s something about her stance that demonstrates the sort of confidence that only comes from long experience. She’s clearly a cape, and I start to understand that there’s nothing I can do.

I set the case on the ground, and begin backing away slowly.

“Hold on a second,” she leans against the wall of the alleyway, leaving the case between us, “I want to talk to you for a bit.”

I freeze in place. I know that she’s a cape, but I have no idea what she does and that terrifies me. If she’s anything like the thing I saw fighting alongside those soldiers, then there’s no way I can beat her. All I can do is listen.

“I’ve been keeping an eye out for you for a while now,” she begins, “and you’ve really been all over the place.” She smiles briefly, before her expression turns serious. “The problem is that other people might know about you as well. Now, I understand that you probably have your own thing going, but if it ever gets too much then I want you to come find me. I’m around the red-light district most nights, as they can’t really trust anyone else to not get distracted or involved in a scandal or something stupid like that.”

Some of my doubt must have shown through on my inhuman face, and she somehow picked up on it.

“Don’t look at me like that. Listen, my people can help you. I can help you. I haven’t told them about you yet, and I won’t, because I know they’d tell me to try a hard sell. Just please consider it, okay? If it ever gets too much? We have to look after our own.”

I nod, slowly, before slipping into the shadows. She doesn’t light the flare, instead smiling a little as she picks up the case and strolls off in the direction of the red-light district. I head the other way, and I know that if I had a heart in this form then it’d be racing. She sacred me, but some of what she said made sense. I am looking after my own. I just hope he won’t be too disappointed in me for losing the money…

I could stay out for longer, try and scrounge up some more, but that cape spooked me. Right now, I’m seeing danger in every patch of light, and even the shadows have lost some of their usual comfort. Instead, I slink back home through the shadows, spending as little time as possible out of them. Instead of pushing aside the chain-link fence, cash in hand, I simply slide under it before forming myself on the doorstep of our building. It’s a little courtesy I’ve developed, to let Mike know that I’m here.

The door to the factory is still there, it’s just a little rusty. It doesn’t squeak, though. Not since I took that bottle of oil. It still takes a bit of force to open it, but there’s nothing I can do about that. On the ground floor I can almost fool myself into thinking the building is intact. The walls are still up, and most of the rooms still have their doors. There isn’t any light, but that’s more of a safety choice. The last thing either of us wants is for anyone to realise we’re living here. I gently push aside the door to Mike’s room, checking up on him.

He’s still sound asleep, just as he was when I left, curled up in his sleeping bag. There’s a backpack on the ground by his feet, filled with all the cash I’ve gathered for him. It’s the product of nights of work, and he likes to look through it sometimes, when he thinks I’m not looking. I smile a little, before spotting the open zip on the backpack. That’s not right; he always keeps it closed. I move slowly into his room, being even more careful not to make a sound so as not to disturb him, and gingerly open up the backpack with an outstretched finger.

It’s open. Two words that rocked throughout my mind, sending my heart racing and putting me into a panic. I rummage through the bag, a hopeless act born of desperation, before throwing it aside. I leap up onto Mike’s makeshift bed, sweeping aside a few needles to try and shake him awake, to warn him so that he can do something. So that he can make things right.

He’s ice cold to the touch.


	6. Vagrant: 1.06

I limp out of the old factory, forcing myself to put one foot in front of the other. The chain link fence blocks my exit, and I scrabble against the metal unsteadily before pushing it aside enough for me to squeeze through. I could have ducked into the shadows and passed below it without effort, but I didn’t. I could still slip into the darkness, as easily as breathing, and lose myself in the city. It would lift the fog from my mind; I always feel a little clearer when I’m hiding, a little less emotional. I don’t want to. Not now. If I did, then I’d start to remember, and I’d only feel worse when I leave the shadows, and feel the weight of my body once more.

So I leave, stumbling through the shadows of the city, or clambering up crumbling brickwork and rusted fire escapes. Part of my mind drifts back to everything I’m leaving behind: my home, furnished with woven rugs that have started to lose their colour in the cold air, and rot away in the damp; my pile of rotten wood and scraps of cushions and cloth that serves as a passable bed, home to a forest of ticks and what few rats I haven’t yet driven off; my radio, my one window into the wider world, lovingly cared for against the wind and the rain. The room downstairs, and everything in it.

I feel like I should be crying, like oily black tears should be pouring down my face, but it seems I can’t. It seems I’ve lost my tears, just as I’ve lost my voice. Somehow, I’m certain I had them once, certain that I’ve cried my eyes out and shouted myself hoarse many times before, and that makes their absence hurt all the worse. Instead I simply wander, hoping that distance can soothe the ache in my heart, until I can no longer bear to do even that.

I creep furtively through the streets, darting from shadow to shadow rather than flying through them. It’s slow, almost agonisingly so, but that gives me the time I need to think, to turn my mind to the simple concerns of moving and hiding. I duck into an alleyway, almost the same in character as the one I woke up in, and clamber up on top of a dumpster to get myself off the cold concrete, curling up on top of the dumpster’s lid – made of that strange material that’s neither metal nor wood – with my head resting on my hands.

I simply wait and listen as the city moves on around me. I hear the sound of tyres on tarmac, as cars and trucks wheel past the edge of the alleyway, mingling with the clack of heels on concrete as the occasional person passes by the entrance. There’s a bar nearby – just around the corner from my alley – and I can hear the clink of glasses, the murmur of intimate conversations merging with celebratory shouts and angry, accusatory, words. I can’t make out the words, but the mingling tones speaks of their worries and fears, their friends and lovers.

A pair of voices draw closer, a man and a woman laughing and giggling at each other’s slurred speech. They round the corner, their hands wandering up and down each other’s body, but I can’t find it in myself to move. I just can’t bring myself to hide, or to run, or to do anything. The scream is inevitable, as is the brief panic as the man scrambles backwards and the woman falls to the floor, twisting her heel. Something about the naked concern in his eyes as he looks at her sets me off, and I screech, leaping off the dumpster like a coiled spring.

I drive two claws into his chest, knocking him off balance so that we both fall into a heap onto the grimy floor. I pin him down as I slash at his face with my hands, before curling them into fists and pounding them into his jaw and cheeks, over, and over, and over again. I hear a scream, right next to me, and something tries to pull me off the man, but I ignore it. I just keep hitting him, until a high-heeled shoe kicks my face, and forces me to look up. The woman is there, tears running through her mascara as she looks down at the man. I take another look at his face, and see the vicious cuts and bruises, weeping red slashes crisscrossing a sea of purple splotches. My jaw drops, and I slip into the shadows without thinking.

I hurl myself backwards through the pitch-black alleyway, watching the couple as they shrink. She’s crouching over him, clutching his face in her hands as she dabs at the blood with her expensive coat. They dwindle into nothing as I hurtle through the alleyways, and the cloud around my thought fades. It’s too late now, to stop myself thinking about all the signs I should have noticed, every warning I wilfully ignored because I just wanted it to be real. I just wanted him to be happy, because that made me feel happy too.

It’s all my fault. I’m the reason he’s dead.

I can’t go back to the factory, not with all its memories, but I don’t think I could stand setting up somewhere else. Wouldn’t I just end up doing the same things all over again? I’d trawl the streets at night, but eventually the isolation would start to wear me down and I’d throw myself at the first person to talk to me. Then they’d die, or they’d leave, or I’d scare them off and I’d be right back where I started. I don’t think I can live like this.

That’s when realisation hits me, cold and heartless. I’m not human, no matter how much I may try to ape them, but that doesn’t mean I’m alone. I think back to the armoured suit that tore those metal aircraft from the air, or the woman in the alleyway who seemed to exude confidence and menace in equal measure. I know there are people in this world who are separate from the rest of humanity, who have powers they lack. Maybe they’ll be tougher, maybe I won’t get them killed. There’s something in me that finds the idea of seeking safety with another cape – though I’ve never really thought of myself as one – strangely appealing. It would almost be comforting, if I didn’t still feel like a failure.

With my mind set, I start to slide through the shadows of the city, absent my usual enthusiasm. I don’t run along the rooftops, instead ducking down into the drains to travel as I used to when I first got here, before I became stupid and overconfident. I pop up every now and then to get my bearings, but spend the majority of my time floating through brackish water, the only interesting sight the occasional rat. I’m safe down here – nobody can see me, and nobody will find me – but the price of that safety is any connection to the city above.

Eventually, I start to see a faint red glow in the distance, and I duck back into the drains before emerging into the shadows of another alleyway, one end bathed in the red light of that familiar district. I creep up the side of the building, not emerging from the shadows, and start to peer out onto the street from whatever patches of darkness offer me the best view. It’s getting late, later than usual, and the flow of men and woman through the district has slowed, but they’re still there. I see her, standing alone amidst a crowd of people. She’s still dressed in that black and orange costume, talking to a man in a suit outside a gaudy-looking building.

I reform myself within the shadows of the alleyway and a part of me instantly wants to turn and flee, but I push it down. I can’t stay on the streets. I just can’t. I hesitate for a moment at the very end of the alleyway, in the last scrap of shadows before the red glow of the street, looking across at the cape, at her easy confidence and strength. I need to do this. I can’t repeat the same mistakes as before. Something needs to change.

I step out into the light, placing one clawed foot in front of the other as I crawl my way across the street, blinking nervously in the harsh light. Instinctively, I try to slip into the shadows, only to realise I can’t. I can’t escape from this, not now. I’m stuck here whether I like it or not. Someone spots me and I hear a sharp intake of breath. Suddenly, dozens of eyes are looking at me, as hushed whispers start to echo throughout the alleyway. The cape turns at the sound, and I see her eyes widen briefly in recognition, before a small smile spreads across her face. She steps forwards and meets me in the middle of the street, right where everyone can see.

“You came back.” She drops to one knee in front of me, bringing her head close to my own and resting a hand on my shoulder. The contact feels good, and it’s nice not to have to crane my neck. If she’s at all unnerved by my appearance, she doesn’t show it.

“I thought you might,” she continues, “though I wasn’t expecting it to be this soon.”

That sends my mind right back to everything I’ve lost, and she seems to notice the change in expression on my avian face.

“Come on,” she says as she stands, beckoning with her arm, “you look like you could use something strong.”

I follow her – it’s not like there’s anything else I can do – as she steps off the street and into the dingy doorway of a two-story building with a woman’s body outlined in glowing pink tubes across the façade, a glass silhouetted in her hand. She steps past the guard, who stares at me but doesn’t make a move, and into the main room of a large bar, with women dancing on a stage that runs through the centre. The cape exchanges a few words with a man in a light blue shirt in a strange pattern, and he leads the two of us up a set of stairs.

The upper room is more intimate, with plush carpets rather than hard wood and magenta curtains drapes over the windows. There is a row of doors along one wall, and our guide briefly peers through one before holding it open for us. Inside is a small group of chairs set around a plain table. The cape sinks into a leather armchair, leaving the couch free for me. I stretch out my entire length along it, looking up at the cape as she leans back in her chair. We wait there in silence for a while, as her eyes roam up and down my body. She’s sizing me up, or she’s just curious. It’s a better reaction than fear, I suppose.

After a while, one of the club’s staff, dressed in an absurdly risqué outfit that my host doesn’t even seem to notice, comes in with two glasses and a glass bottle of some golden-brown liquid. She sets the drink on top of the table between us, and accepts a wad of green bills from the cape before departing.

“They deserve a nice tip for everything they put up with,” she says by way of explanation, as she half fills the two small glasses and slides one over to me. I take a deep drink, biting down the strong taste as fire flows down my throat.

“Anyway,” she leans back, her own drink in her hand, “introductions. When I’m dressed like this, I’m Ember.”

I nod sagely, not entirely sure what she means. She pauses for a moment, before continuing.

“And you are?” I just stare at her, opening my beak. “Unable to talk. Sorry, I should have realised. Do you have a name?”

I pause in disbelief as I realise I don’t. For some reason, the thought panics me. I feel like I had a name, once, and I’ve only just noticed its absence. Ember notices my distress, and stares at me with naked pity in her eyes before reaching over to rub her hand against my shoulder. The pity hurts, even though it’s also strangely comforting.

“It’s okay. We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.”

She picks up the bottle as she leans across the table, and I hold out my glass so that she can refill it. She seems a little less now than she did outside, calmer and less predatory, like she’s letting her guard down. I’m not so sure she should, not around me.

“Something happened, didn’t it?” I shrink into myself. “Hey, it’s okay. You don’t need to tell me about it if you don’t want to. You’re a little different than you were earlier, that’s all. I assume you’re here to accept my offer?”

I fortify myself with another drink, practically throwing it down my throat, then nod. She hesitates before pouring more golden-brown nectar into my glass.

“You know,” she smiles before putting on a fake scowl that doesn’t quite reach her eyes, “if you’re just going to drink all this in one go then I’m going to stop giving it to you. This whisky was imported from Scotland and it deserves better than that.”

I take gentle sips this time, letting the oaken liquid roll down my tongue, tongue being something I have in abundance. It’s nice, sharp enough to keep me alert while strong enough to stop me thinking too hard.

“Anyway, the offer still stands. We’re always looking for new Parahumans to recruit, and we’d be willing to bring you on for a very competitive wage. I can also offer you a place to stay, at least until you get on your feet. You’re not the first cape we’ve recruited who’d have trouble interacting with normal society.”

I smile a little, as I consider just how much of an understatement that is. Ember shares my mirth as a grin spreads across her face.

“As for what we’ll expect from you,” – I tense up – “from what I understand of your powers, it’ll mostly be recon work, though you may have to fight on occasion. Will that be a problem?”

I pause to think for a moment, before nodding my assent. In all honesty, fighting doesn’t scare me in the same way it once did. Attacking that man in the alleyway was stupid, but at least it felt like I was doing something. It was the same with that corpse in the north end. I need to keep myself active, so that I don’t slide back into bad habits and complacency. So I don’t let anyone else down.

“Great. You’ll be working directly for me for the most part, but you might end up doing odd jobs for some of our other capes, if they need an infiltrator. The important thing to remember is that you’ll be part of the West Coast’s largest parahuman organisation, and I mean every part of that. We’re run by parahumans, for parahumans. That’s what makes us unique, and it means we’ll look after you, so long as you look after us.”

She leans forwards again, holding out her hand.

“So,” she asks, “are you in?”

I look at her hand, and all the promises it holds. All the restrictions, too. Part of me is afraid, but my decision was made the moment I stepped into the light. I can’t stop now, can’t go back to wandering the streets, too blind to notice that I was helping my only friend kill himself by inches. I bite down my doubts and keep moving forwards, stretching an oily-black arm across to her. We shake hands over the table, and she refills our glasses.

“Welcome to the Elite,” she says, as we clink our glasses together. “The name might not mean anything to you now, but I promise it will soon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So ends the first arc, with out protagonist joining America's second largest Parahuman organisation. I dearly hope you've enjoyed the ride so far; I certainly have.
> 
> Building Seattle has been a fascinating endeavour and I've only scratched the surface of the city, and the factions that call it home.
> 
> The next chapter will be an interlude focusing on Ember and her little corner of the Seattle Elite.


	7. Interlude: Ember

I can hear the club’s music from out on the street. Apparently, it’s not enough to drink too much, or to blow your money on strippers and prostitutes, you have to deafen yourself as well. Otherwise it’s not real entertainment. Still, I must admit it’s easy to get lost in the mood. The alcohol and music, certainly. This is entirely the wrong sort of strip club for me, but the ones I like don’t make nearly as much profit. But I’m not here for pleasure; I’m here for business, and business means reassuring our paying customers. Business means putting on a tight-fitting bodysuit and doing my hair up into a ponytail, when I could do the job much better from inside the security hub, nursing a cup of coffee.

Still, they’re not bad people by any means – even if they get a little leery at times – and I do like the nightlife every now and then. Admittedly, I like it a lot less than I used to, but that’s a hazard of the job. Who’d have thought it would be possible to get bored of going clubbing? Apparently, all it takes is turning it into a job.

Michaelson smiles at me, looking like a mountain in his jet-black suit, broken up by the grey plastic armband that holds his ID. He’s one of ours, just like every other bouncer, leg-breaker and security guard in the district, so I make sure to spend a while chatting with him as he waves people through, cutting an imposing figure as I lean against the wall. The line of clubbers slowly files past me as they’re let into the club, always held back just long enough to keep up the illusion of a full room, regardless of how many people are actually in there. They could pack then in there like sardines if they wanted to – not like I’d care about fire safety limits – but then the club wouldn’t look busy anymore.

The patrons themselves can tell you a lot about the place. This isn’t one of the districts’ best, and the customers reflect that. They’ve made an effort, of course, but Michaelson isn’t going to be turning anyone away for being underdressed. I wouldn’t be standing outside the sort of place that would; better for everyone that security stays out of sight and out of mind whenever Seattle’s best and brightest want to do lines of cocaine and screw prostitutes. It makes it easier for them to forget to check for hidden cameras. Most of them have cottoned on – thanks to a nosy PRT sting operation – and switched over to house calls, but the stupider ones still walk into our web, and there are a lot of stupid people in the world.

By the look of the line, it’s ladies’ night. Of course, the posters could have told me that but I like to keep my eye in. All it basically means is that the club hires a couple of male dancers for the night, adds free entry and discounted drinks for the ladies’ benefit, and an amateur night competition for the men’s. All that adds up to is a line that’s roughly two-thirds male, rather than ninety-five percent.

Most of that third is made up of three different hen-dos, as well as some enterprising sorority girls from the university and a few unfortunates who were dragged here by their boyfriends, or dragged them here. There’s also what looks like an incredibly ill-thought-out business outing, which is already five different scandals waiting to happen. It’s a complete clusterfuck, better known as just another night in the Amsterdam of the West Coast.

I can see the hens looking at me as they titter to each other. I can’t say I’m overly fond of the attention, but that’s the price I pay for being one of our more ‘public’ capes. Not completely public, of course, but enough so that people around here tend to keep an eye out for me. I’m part of the local flavour, apparently. That being said, the first one of them to ask for a selfie will end up flat on her ass. They know it, just like I know that won’t stop them from asking. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have to smile and shake their hand, to subject myself to the whims of some bullshit PR department. I just don’t understand how they can do it without snapping.

Unless they’re Fume, of course. The bitch.

A man steps out of the club wearing slicked back hair, a bright red shirt and an apparently genuine smile. He steps over to me, and shakes my hand. There’s a glass of something blue in the other hand, but I know there’s no alcohol in it. It’s an illusion; part of a carefully constructed persona.

“Mister Lao,” I greet him.

“Ember,” he responds, almost mockingly, “how many times do I have to tell you to call me Ethan?”

“One more time, I’m sure.”

He chuckles, just like he chuckles every night. This is the main part of my job; checking in with the movers and shakers of the Red-Light district. It helps them feel like they’re getting value for money, and it gives them a chance to air any grievances or concerns they may have. There’s usually some spot of trouble every three or four places, but the bouncers can deal with most of it. I’m there for the serious trouble, the sort of stuff that comes in from outside the district.

Lao starts to ramble, a long spiel I’ve heard many times before in which his business troubles somehow manage to merge with his personal troubles and a half-hearted attempt at flirting that’s more a product of habit than any genuine interest. He tells me about the son of an aerospace exec, who got dragged out of the club by his own mother, or the money he’d lost gambling on the fighting pits. One of those is a problem I might need to deal with, especially of the exec is one of ours, but the other is just Lao’s shit eye for fighters. Of course, when I say as much to him, he turns it into an excuse to eye me instead.

My earpiece crackles into life, saving me from his half-hearted attempts at ‘romance’.

“Ma’am, there’s trouble outside Roxxie’s. Triad affiliates, moving in force but without cape support. Looks like a ram raid.”

“Copy that,” I reply, glad for something to save me from the tedium, “move Charlie and Delta teams around to cut off their escape.”

I’m about to make half-hearted apologies to Lao, but he waves me off. I nod, grateful that he can be serious when it matters, and start to sprint through the streets as a faint smile spreads across my face. A ram raid; a bunch of doped up fuckheads trying to smash as much stuff as they can, while pocketing all the money they can find. I can feel tongues of fire lapping at my heart, but it’s not time yet.

The crowds scatter at my approach, while the bouncers and security guards give me respectful nods. I catch a flash of orange light on my left, as a matt-grey car speeds past on a neighbouring street, hazard lights on full blast. I wanted to make them green, to really stick it to those tyrants in the PRT, but apparently there are laws against that sort of thing. Still, in this neighbourhood orange is as good as gold. The police come by occasionally, but they generally prefer to stick to the safer parts of town, and the PRT wouldn’t dare send any of their pet heroes here. Instead they get us, and Sagittarius PSC.

Roxxie’s is right around the corner, so I pull on the flames in my heart and let the heat spread through my body until it feels like I’m going to burst into flames. Then it stops, all sense of temperature, smell and touch falling out of reach as everything becomes clear…

There are thirty-three people outside Roxxie’s, twenty-one of whom are wearing the light-blue armband of the Triad. The rest are customers, and one bouncer putting pressure on a stab wound in his gut. I dismiss them, focusing on the threat. Beyond the armband, the Triad gangsters are a mix of different ethnicities loosely aligned around three separate gangs. They could have been acting on the orders of a Triad cape, or they could have simply come together in a coalition. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that they haven’t yet battered down the doors to the club.

One of them sees me, shouting a warning, and I simply raise an ashen hand, sending a bolt of orange cinders right into his face, knocking him back with concussive force and burning into his skin before dissipating. They panic, as I expected, and start to scatter. One of them, brave or foolish, pulls a thirty-eight special from the belt of his pants, and puts three rounds into my chest. I feel the bullets pass through me, shifting ash and fire, before exiting out of my back, taking insignificant flecks with them. I return fire, my whole arm glowing from within before releasing a spear of condensed cinders that knocks the gunman flat onto his back, taking a good chunk of his skin with it as he writhes in agony.

Four of them, the ones closest to the back, turn and run at the sight of their screaming colleague. I fire blasts from my hand at them as they run, but I’m not overly concerned about stopping them. The others can handle that. The rest of them find their courage, and rush me with a collection of bats, pipes and knives. The knives are nothing to worry about, but those are few and far between. I start to duck and weave around the blunt weapons, letting the knives sink deep into me while I burn the hand holding it. The mathematics of displacement, performed while sending off cinder blasts and heating up my exterior for scorching blows.

Eventually, their numbers start to dwindle, as more and more of them slip away from the back of the melee. They don’t get far, as a dozen men – armoured, and carrying riot shields and clubs – block off the other end of the street. One of the enemies, the leader, pulls his men back and tries to break through the shield wall, only to be battered down in a hail of clubs. It’s over, and the guards start to line the Triad gangsters up against the wall. The leader is dragged in front of me and forced to his knees, his shoulders held in a vice-like grip by two burly guards in black uniforms.

I stare down at him before igniting the cinders in my hand until it glows with a bright orange heat. I press my palm against his cheek and, almost tenderly, curl my fingers around his face as he writhes and screams. When I let go, there’s the image of a hand burned into his face, burned almost to the bone. Hesitantly, almost reluctantly, I push back against the fires, and smother them in ash…

Flesh returns, and with it the smell of burning flesh and the taste of ash in the air. I force down my nausea, drawing upon long practice, and look down at the barely-coherent leader. He can’t hear me, not like this, so I turn to the two dozen others pressed against the wall.

“Next time bring a Cape.”

That’s all I can bear to say to them, before I start striding back into the district. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like playing the terrifying warlord, but that doesn’t mean I’m comfortable looking over so many burns. Jaarsveld falls into step besides me, looking every inch the professional in his riot gear. He’s not from Seattle, like most of our guys, having been recruited in Oregon and transferred up to Washington when we set up here. Before that he was a bouncer for a club, and before that he was in the South African Army. He fled in ninety-five, but if he has any issues with me then he’s never shown them. He’s far too much of a professional for that.

“Jaeger arrived at the office, ma’am. He says he wants to talk to you.”

Shit. Isn’t he supposed to be out of the city?

“Right then. I’ll take the car.”

Jaars nods, waving forwards one of the two security cars – with their yellow flashing lights and mesh covers over the windows. I wanted to buy jeeps or armoured cars, but apparently that would be too overt. Instead we get a few four-door Fords, which I have been assured are used by police somewhere in the world. I still don’t see it, but we got a decent deal on them.

The crowds duck and weave as we travel through the streets, orange hazard lights flashing to advertise our presence to even the drunkest of customers, before pulling into the car park of a squat grey building at the centre of the northern edge of the district. It used to be a cluster of four houses, sandwiched between two roads, but it’s almost unrecognisable now: concrete barriers have been put up around the perimeter, topped with thick coils of razor wire; the windows have all been given an additional coating of wire mesh; and, of course, there are all the heavily armed bastards standing around the place.

The driver – Grayson, I think – parks up next to three more identical Fords, with a couple of Transit vans next to them. It’s not a large operation, certainly not when compared to the Northgate precinct the PRT inherited from the National Guard, or even the nearby Police precinct in Green Lake, but it gets the job done. In all honesty, we don’t really need the fortress. If our guys are spending their time behind the perimeter fence, then they’re not protecting our customers.

The closest house to the entrance is the public face of the operation: holding a lost and found office, a few cells for drunks and a few slightly less friendly cells for whoever deserves it. The next two are more general purpose – one for the bouncers and one for the better armed and better paid security teams – holding changing rooms, showers, armouries and break rooms. The last one holds the command and control centre for the district: our CCTV system, Jaars’ office and a few rooms on the top floor for the ‘consultants’. It also has a slightly disproportionate number of twenty-something black girls working in it, but that’s neither here nor there.

Jaeger’s waiting for me in my office on the top floor, having rather kindly sat himself down in my guest chair, rather than my considerably more comfortable swivel chair. He cuts an impressive figure in his dark green uniform, with its ceramic mask attached to a tall peaked cap. I’ve thought about making a pass at him more than once, but workplace relationships are a bad enough idea without adding capes into the mix. Instead I just slump down into my seat and rest my feet on my desk, something I know annoys him immensely.

“I thought you were supposed to be out of the city by now.”

“I was,” he replies, his Canadian accent still noticeable even after so many years south of the border, “but something came up.”

He pulls a memory stick out of one of his belt pouches – one of the larger-than-normal encrypted disks we use for high-value-information – and passes it over to me. I boot up my computer, and pull up a video file that looks like it’s been lifted straight from a convenience store CCTV system.

“This isn’t the sort of juicy gift you usually bring me. Spirits would be better, or maybe chocolates.”

“That’s hardly fair,” he chuckles, “you haven’t even watched it yet.”

I shake my head, but play the video. At first glance, it looks exactly like most convenience stores do after the rush of pre-drinkers has dies down. It looks the same at second glance, and the seconds tick on with no sign of anything unusual. My eyes briefly dart back to Jaeger and I’m about to ask what’s going on when I spot a flash of something in the corner of my eye. Instantly my attention goes straight back to the screen as Jaeger gently chuckles in the background.

I skip backwards twenty seconds, and fix my eyes on the screen. I watch as a man in a crisp white shirt – with a very prominent red wine stain – picks a sandwich of the shelves, before moving on to the next aisle. Then, the very moment the aisle is empty, a jet-black hand literally slips out of the shadows underneath the shelves, stealing a sandwich before disappearing back into the shadows. The angle changes, and the timestamp advances a minute or so, and I watch, fascinated, as a beak-like face forms itself in the aisle, hurriedly devouring the sandwich before disappearing back under the shelves.

I lean back in my chair as the video goes on, showing different angles of the same creature entering and exiting the store. Jaeger is grinning from ear to ear at the look on my face.

“That’s not something you see every day.”

“No, it’s not.” His expression turns serious, the way it always does when things move to business. “The PRT are aware of him, and they’ve told their patrols to keep an eye out, but he’s not operating in their territory.”

“Where is he, or she, operating?” I ask, only a little reproachful.

“West of here, based on the stores that have been hit. Triad territory.”

“I see.”

I really do. There’s a lot of unspoken weight in those two words.

“So you see my problem.” He spreads his arms wide, leaning back a little without ever losing his serious expression. “I’m needed in Richland, but I can’t just let this go.”

“Which is where I come in,” I interject.

“Exactly. I’d appreciate if you could track them down and give them the sales pitch. I’ll give you one of my teams, to make it go down easier.”

I lean back, thinking about it for a moment. My eye drifts to the hip flask in my desk drawer, but I ignore it. I don’t need a ‘thinking aid’ right now. I look back at the monitor, still playing footage of a jet-black arm pilfering food.

“Fine, but I’m doing it my way. I want to try the soft sell, and, when that works, I want our new cape to work for me.”

“We may not have that much time.” He leans forwards, fixing me with a piercing stare. “We can’t risk the Triad getting their hands on him.”

“You’ll be in Richland for at least a week, right?”

“Probably a little longer than a week,” he scowls. “It all depends on how cooperative the locals are.”

“So give me until you get back to try it my way? You’ve got your guys in the PRT, but I have guys in the Triad. If they get close to her, I’ll move in for the hard sell, but I don’t want to risk alienating a potential recruit. You’ve heard of these monstrous capes, right? She’s probably an amnesiac. She’s certainly homeless, given that she’s stealing food rather than cash. We can offer security, and a way off the streets.”

He sits there for a moment, contemplating his decision. We’re both at the same level in the hierarchy, but this clearly falls within his area of responsibility, so it’s his decision in the end. I may not like it, but I’ll go along with it if he disagrees. I trust Jaeger’s reasoning, even if he can be a bit uptight at times.

“Fine,” he concedes, and I try to keep a smug grin off my face. “Until I get back. Then I’ll try it my way.”

We shake hands, and Jaeger stands up to leave. He adjusts his holsters, getting them comfortable against his thighs, before retrieving his long-barrelled rifle from where he’d leant it against the wall. Once he’s slung the mean-looking weapon over his shoulder, he turns back to me.

“By the way, what’s with all this ‘she’ business? He doesn’t look particularly feminine.”

“Just a hunch.” I smile mischeivously. “Want to put your money where your mouth is?”

I place a hundred-dollar bill on the table, and give Jaeger my best shit-eating grin – something I’ve been practicing since I was nine. He swears under his breath, before adding his own hundred to my own. With that, he strides out of the door and leaves me alone in my office, with the video of the strange cape still looping on repeat.

Days pass, and I spend more and more of my time trying to figure out the strange cape. Jaeger lends me one of his PRT moles, through an intermediary of course, and through them I get a report of our cape getting involved in a fight against the Hive. The PRT briefly considered the possibility that she’s aligned with the hive, but quickly dismissed it. Either way, they start to increase their efforts at recruiting her. The Triad learns about her as well, through a shopkeeper who pays them protection, and suddenly it seems like the whole city is looking for her.

With that newfound attention, the information starts to flood in. The description of how the cape moved after being found by Telekine gives me my most important insight; rather than moving inter her stranger form, she ran away down the street. That’s what leads me to the conclusion that she can only use her Stranger state in areas of low light.

Two days later her pattern changes again. She starts stealing cash, first limiting herself to loose change before moving onto larger and larger amounts. At first, I think she’s been picked up by the Triad, but my contacts deny it and she’s still stealing food. It’s confusing, but it makes it a little easier for me. After all, the most cash in the area passes through my little kingdom of brothels and strip clubs. So I have Jaarsveld tell everyone to be a look out, and install dozens more cameras around the perimeter of the district.

It pays off a couple of nights later, when our mystery cape is seen throwing herself out of Desire’s second floor office. She can’t move fast, not with a case full of loose cash in her hands, so I leap into one of our cars and drive as fast as I can to cut her off, guided by Jaars in the CCTV room. I bring the car to a stop a block ahead of her last-seen location, and start to stalk through the alleyways, until I spot her crawling down a dingy alleyway, clutching her prize to her chest.

Somehow, she looks even darker in person. I’ve seen her on the cameras, of course, but it’s another thing entirely to see her obviously inhuman body in person. Her four main limbs are clearly powerful – with taut muscle visible in every movement – but it’s a lean strength, suited to running rather than fighting. The two limbs tucked underneath her head, in contrast, are almost shockingly human in appearance, if the same midnight black as the rest of her. Her six eyes, piercing and yellow, are darting around the alleyway fearfully.

I take a deep breath, and step out in front of her.


	8. Interlude 2: Ember

“Welcome to the Elite. The name might not mean anything to you now, but I promise it will soon.”

Our glasses clink together in the centre of the table, and we both start taking small sips of fine scotch. My ‘guest’ – for want of a better name, or any name at all – is a little more at ease now, though all six of her eyes are still downcast. I understand what she’s going through, even if I’ve never experienced it. She’s been living on her own, or near enough, for what may as well be her whole life –a little over two weeks if my guess is right – so it must feel strange to interact with other people.

“Now that you’re in,” I say, once we’ve both finished our drinks, “we need to talk business.”

Instantly, her eyes swivel to face me, and she becomes a little more guarded.

“It’s nothing to worry about,” – I try to soothe her – “but you do need to understand who you’re working for.”

Her head tilts a little to the side. She’s interested, even if she’s incapable of saying as much.

“The Elite as a whole is the largest parahuman organisation in the United States, excluding the government’s capes, of course. We have an almost unbroken chain of operations stretching up the West Coast, a strong presence in Florida on the East Coast, as well as tentative presences in New York State and various smaller cities across the US, Canada and Mexico.”

She seems to take in my words without really understanding them. I guess those place names don’t really mean anything to her. I’m not going to be impressing her with the scale of the Elite, but I do want her to understand what it means to be a part of us. So, let’s try a little history.

“The Elite were formed in nineteen ninety-three – about seventeen years ago – in the city of San Francisco. They were called Uppermost back then, and they were a syndicate of cape-run companies specialising in production and entertainment. Tinkertech devices for short-term use, large-scale rapid construction, cape-provided pyrotechnics, or cape actors for films.”

She’s following along, but she still doesn’t seem to understand what I’m talking about. Just how sheltered is she?

“In nineteen ninety-eight, a bill was passed that effectively gutted Uppermost. It introduced a whole host of fines on Parahuman businesses in an attempt to counteract what they claimed was an ‘inherently unfair and monopolising’ advantage. It was bullshit aimed at dismantling Uppermost. It worked, too. With the fines, the construction sector went under, the Cape actors became a blockbuster gimmick, rather than a new industry standard, and the members of Uppermost gradually drifted apart, with the PRT waiting to snap up as many of them as they could.”

I might have let a little emotion slip into my voice, but who can blame me? Sure, I wasn’t even a cape in ninety-eight, but that doesn’t mean I don’t find the whole thing bullshit. My ‘guest’ – really need to sort out the name thing – seems to be following along, but she could be more interested in my tone than my words. That’s alright.

“The PRT” – now the blood’s really flowing – “are the government agency responsible for monitoring capes. Their website says they’re responsible for ‘helping’ capes, but that’s bullshit. Uppermost reached out to the PRT in ninety-eight, asking for help in either stopping the bill, or minimising it. Now, Uppermost and the PRT had worked together before; on large construction projects, Endbringer defences and a few contracted films. They were even working together on the Sydney reconstruction project while the bill was going through Congress.”

I lean forwards, pouring myself and my guest another drink.

“The PRT abandoned Uppermost. Once the bill had passed, they snapped up dozens of Thinkers and Tinkers from the organisation – the people whose jobs had just been made illegal – and put them into the Protectorate or Watchdog; their pet cape teams. A lot of Uppermost, however, saw what the PRT had done, and came to a bit of a revelation.”

I lean back in my chair. This is the crux of the matter, and if she doesn’t agree with this then I may have lost her forever.

“We can’t let humans decide parahuman matters. They’re afraid of us, because we can do things that they can’t, and that fear makes them act irrationally. So Uppermost dispersed, building up resources right under the nose of the PRT while secretly taking control of the underworld. By the time anybody realised what we were doing, the Elite had already spread across the entire state of California, and we’ve gone from strength to strength since. We’re still focused on making a profit, but we’re not going to let anybody hold us back.”

I think I have her. She certainly looks interested, and she nodded her head at the last line.

“So that’s the Elite. We’re a little feudal in structure, once you get above street level. The Red-Light district” – I sweep my arms out to encompass the whole district, even if we can’t actually see it from in here – “is just one part of our operations in Seattle, the part that answers to me. I’m like a Lord, which makes you like a Knight.”

She smiles at that. These feudal titles are a bit stupid, just like the whole star naming thing, but it always gives our capes a bit of an ego boost to know that they’re listed as knights on internal documents.

“Most of our cities are run by a Baron, who’d then answer to a Duke, but things are a little different in the larger cities. I answer directly to a Duke, and she’s responsible for keeping in contact with our most senior cell in San Francisco. If that’s confusing” – I can see from her expression that it is – “then don’t worry about it. It’s a pyramid structure, like I said, so you only need to worry about our own operation.”

She nods, seemingly grateful. I stand up and walk over to the door, holding it open for her.

“Well come on. It’s time to tour the district.”

She hesitates for a second, before striding past me on all fours. Looking at her, it’s clear that her body is much better suited for moving on four legs than two. I’m still not sure what I think about the two extra arms tucked into her chest – they look a little too human when compared to the rest of her – but, overall, she looks like a sleek predator. Sure, she’s a little hesitant about going out in public, but there’s nothing I can do about that. Like it or not, we need to be visible.

We step out onto the streets, still bustling even at this late hour, and the crowds start to part around us. The people here understand that this is my territory, and they’re not interested in pissing me off. Not when there’re so many carefully crafted rumours about just how permanent our ‘lifetime bans’ are. I’m particularly proud of that one; it took a lot of effort to set up. My companion seems to be a little nervous walking around the customers and prostitutes, and I’m pretty sure she’d be blushing if she could.

To be fair, I was the same when I first started out. That’s what happens when you’re twenty-three and you’ve just been told you’re being sent to Seattle to become ‘some kind of fuckin’ Pimp Queen.’ I’ve had five years to get used to it all.

“Each of these businesses provides us with a fifteen percent cut of their earnings, and that money gets funnelled into the security presence here” – I gesture at the bouncer outside a club door and at a passing security car as it rolls down the street – “and our cut comes from the rest.”

The crowd is giving us a wide enough berth that I decide to move the topic onto something more serious.

“Of course, we’d still be here even if this place made a loss.”

She looks up at me in confusion, her head tilted to one side and her jaw hanging open.

“The real money in this city isn’t in prostitution, even if it does bring a lot of visitors. It’s back there.” I sweep my arm out behind me, taking in the magnificent spires of downtown.

“This place, this whole district, is a buffer state between the nice parts of town and the nasty parts. Without it, we’d have all sorts of crazies sweeping south to fuck with our real bread and butter.”

She nods in understanding, as I lead her through the streets and into the concrete walled compound of Sagittarius PSC. I quickly radio Jaars before telling my companion about the PSC, and the other facilities we have available. The Afrikaner is down in minutes, and he quickly schools his expression when he spots our new cape.

“This is Jaarsveld. He’s in charge of the security teams in the district, and he answers to me directly. Jaars, meet our newest cape.”

“A pleasure,” he says, as said cape stretches out her hand. To his credit, he doesn’t flinch at all has he shakes it.

“And does our newest cape have a name?”

She looks up at me sheepishly, and we share an indeterminable look before I answer.

“We’re still working on that.”

He smirks and wanders off, leaving the two of us alone.

“By the way…” I pause, and she looks up at me in confusion. “You are a woman, right? I’ve kind of just been assuming this whole time.”

She – or perhaps not – pauses for a second, somehow managing to convey an expression of deep thought with next to none of the usual muscles. Eventually, thankfully, she nods her head, and I smile.

“Sweet. I just won a hundred bucks.”

My good mood seems to spread to her, or I’ve just answered a question she didn’t know needed answering. Either way, she doesn’t object when I ask her to wait around for a while. Rather than waiting out in the open, she paces over to one of the vans and I get a good look at just what it looks like when she lips into the shadows. To say it’s weird would be an understatement; her body just seems to disappear intoi smoke as it touches the darkness, dissipating within moments until she’s disappeared entirely. I get down onto all fours, peering underneath the van, but there’s absolutely no sign of her.

“Huh.”

Six beady yellow eyes appear in the shadows, and I somehow get the impression that they’re silently laughing at me. I smile back, before standing up and heading into the Admin block. I change in my office, setting aside my black bodysuit in favour of the black cargo pants, white shirt, tie and branded jacket worn by about a dozen other admin staff in this compound alone. It really does help to have my cape identity and secret identity working in the same place. It’s probably how the PRT handles their pet capes as well.

With my identity safe and sound, I step back out into the car park. Rather unsurprisingly, there’s no sign of my new cape. What’s a little more surprising is that she doesn’t come out from underneath the van, assuming she’s even still there. I crouch down, peering in vain into the darkness as I try to figure this out, before it hits me.

“It’s still me.” I point at myself, and smile reassuringly into the darkness. “Ember. I’ve just taken the costume off.”

Six eyes form again, deep in the shadows, and I smile.

“There you are.” I chuckle to myself. “Come on. My shift’s up, so it’s time to go.”

She crawls out slowly, parts of her forming out of the shadows as she seems to almost pull herself out. It’s awesome and horrifying all at the same time. Within moments, she’s completely formed and looking expectantly up at me. While I’m dressed in civilian clothes. Shit.

“Um.” This is not the time to be sounding hesitant, dammit! I’m supposed to be making a good impression on her! “I don’t suppose you could follow me from the shadows, or something? This is supposed to be a secret identity.”

She looks around, a little panicked, before something seems to spark in her eyes. Without warning, she lifts up the back of my jacket with her tail, and somehow slips up underneath it. I know it’s dark under there, but that’s way less space than she takes up! I can’t even feel her right now!

“That’s terrifying!”

The words are out of my mouth before I can even think about the impact they might have on her. That sends me into a bit of a panic, which is only made worse when I suddenly feel a pressure creeping up my back, sliding up between my jacket and my shirt. Five bony fingers grip my shoulder, tapping against it rhythmically, and I jump a little. That’s when I realise what she’s doing. She’s patting my shoulder. She’s being reassuring.

“Thanks?” Despite my best efforts, it still comes out as a question. “Maybe keep your hands to yourself for now, though. Otherwise people might think I’m hiding a snake under here.”

There’s no sign of agreement, just a sudden absence as the arms slips seamlessly away. I stride through the streets, trying not to think about the cape hiding in my jacket. The one that’s as long as I am tall. It proves difficult, but eventually I’m able to make my way to where my car is parked. My Charger, resplendent in blue. I could wait until I’m inside the car to shake off my guest, but beauty like this needs to be appreciated.

“You can come out now.”

She slips out of my coat in an instant, somehow leaping out of the bottom of the jacket and straight onto all fours. The difference in size between her and the space she was in is almost comical, and makes me wonder about just how small she can get.

Disappointingly, she doesn’t seem at all impressed by my car – it must be her amnesia showing through. She does, however, hesitate when I lean over to open up the passenger door for her. She swallows her fear after a few moments, and slides into the shadows underneath the glove box. Almost as an afterthought, a jet-black hand darts out and closes the car door, before disappearing again. I smile as I start the engine, feeling the familiar purr of the V8 that never really gets used to its full potential in the inner city.

As I drive through the streets, as fast as I can go without drawing the attention of the cops, my eyes keep darting over to the shadows under the glove box. She’s in there, but I can’t see her. I can’t see her at all. The things she could do…

“Poke your head out if you want,” I say. “I don’t think there’s a risk of you getting spotted this late at night, so you might as well get a look at the nice part of the city.”

There’s a moment’s pause, before a head and shoulders poke out of the darkness, upside down so that she can look up and over the dashboard. Part of me thinks about how much she looks like an eager dog with its head out the window, but I stamp that thought down. I can’t start thinking of her as anything less than human just because of how she looks, or because she’s mute. She works for me, which means I need to treat her as I’d expect to be treated. I need to stop putting this off.

“We need to talk about a name.”

Three of her eyes dart over to me, but her head stays facing forwards. I don’t know if it’s genuine interest in the city, or just nerves.

Shit. She can’t speak. I don’t even know if she can write!

“Normally, Capes tend to pick a name that’s influenced by their powers. In my case, I go by Ember because of how I look when I use my power. But I understand if you don’t want to do that, given your…”

The words die in my throat. She chirps a little, seemingly frustrated at her lack of speech, and tries to figure out how to communicate what she means to me. Eventually, she reaches out with one of her hands and sweeps it up and down her body – which is currently just a head, shoulders and her secondary arms – before tapping her arm against her head. I think I get it.

“You don’t want to hide what you are.” She chirps in agreement. “I understand.”

That makes things a little easier, but I still need to think carefully. We sit there in silence for a while, and I spot a party of university students on the other side of the road. They’re all dressed up for a night on the town, and I doubt they’ll be awake for the afternoon before the night it done. I look again at my passenger, at her jet-black skin and cat-like yellow eyes. I think back to everything I know about her habits from surveillance cameras and not-so-secure PRT documents. I hesitate for a moment, drumming my fingers against the steering wheel.

“You’re pretty nocturnal, aren’t you?”

Another chirp, full of pride.

“Seattle is pretty great at night. Everyone forgets who they were during the day, and just lets themselves cut loose. Everything’s a little more extreme: the fights, the fucks, the friends. It’s another city, one that sometimes feels more real than the real one.”

More chirps, more agreement, as her eyes roam over the city. I think I’ve got it now.

“There’s a lot of words for people who’d rather live in this city. A night owl, night person, nighthawk, night bird. Nightcrawler.”

She lets out a strange sound at the last one, a whistling noise that rises and falls seemingly at random. I glance over to her and see her shoulders shaking. She’s laughing. We hit a strait, and I move the car up a gear as I pick up speed, listening as the engine purrs in response. I smile, and she smiles too.

“Nightcrawler it is.”


	9. Initiate: 2.01

She’s taking me towards the lights, towards the impossible towers at the centre of the world. I look as long as I dare, poking my head over the dashboard of the car, my body still hiding among the shadows, as we cross the narrow expanse of water that borders what I’ve come to think of as my part of the city. I can’t directly see those buildings, but I can see evidence of their presence. It’s overcast, and the clouds are lit up in red and gold from below, the light of the city overwhelming the darkness of the moonless night. It looks like we’re driving into an inferno, or a sunrise.

The bridge is lit by regularly placed streetlights, whose orange glow sweeps over me like the flashing green lights of the soldiers’ truck. The sensation is strange, as I flinch away from the soft orange lights only to be bathed in blissful darkness for an instant. There are a few cars in front of us, a steady stream of white lights from the scant oncoming traffic and red pinpricks from the rear of the car in front of us. A second bridge crosses the channel to my right, a raised edifice of steel and concrete that glitters with yet more traffic. That road is busier, and the vehicles are moving far faster than looks safe.

The wheels rumble as the surface of the road changes from flat concrete to the steel grating of a drawbridge, the sudden change in sound causing me to jump a little, pulling a little more of my torso back into the shadows. Besides me, Ember chuckles at my nerves. She turns to look at me, and I see a reassuring smile on her face. I smile back – as best I can without any of the needed muscles – with my mouth gaping wide to reveal the razor-sharp teeth tucked just behind my beak-like skull. By all rights, baring my teeth shouldn’t look like a smile, but both Mike and Ember seem to find it an acceptable substitute.

“We’re almost there,” she says in a soft voice. “We’re just heading into Eastlake now. Welcome to your new neighbourhood.”

I want to duck away from the lights, but my curiosity is enough to overrule my instincts. Eastlake looks newer than anywhere I’ve seen before; it’s almost impossibly clean, without a scrap of graffiti or broken window anywhere to be seen. There are still people, and they’re still drunk, but there are far fewer of the ragged and desperate types that used to fill the majority of the streets. I spot a couple of black uniformed soldiers talking pointedly to a man in a pink shirt, with an open bottle in his hand and a wine stain running down his chest. They’re not dressed for war – like the grey-uniformed ones – wearing peaked caps instead of helmets and carrying pistols instead of those strangely boxy metal rifles.

The road forks, and we pass underneath the enormous bridge I saw over the channel, the enormous structure supported directly overhead on concrete pillars, casting its shadow onto the car as we pass underneath. The buildings are all strangely blocky, and cables crisscross the streets, but I could learn to like this place. It might not be as comfortingly gloomy as my last haunt, but places like that still remind me a little too much of Mike for comfort. Maybe he was using me, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t nice to know that there’s someone at home who’ll be happy to see me.

Maybe Ember is using me as well, but that’s all right. I don’t mind if she is, because I’m using her for shelter. For human contact. She doesn’t look at me like I’m a freak, and she hasn’t treated me like a dumb animal even though I’m mute. I’m willing to overlook a lot for those simple treasures.

Ember pulls the car into a short car park next to the shoreline, with a long expanse of dark water stretching across a small lake before ending in the glittering lights of another part of the city. She gets out of the car, and I scramble over the gearstick to leave through the same door as her, rather than fiddling with my own. She steps aside to let me out, before walking around to the trunk of her car and pulling out a hooded jacket, putting it over her work clothes and pulling the hood up, casting her head into shadow.

“You can see through the shadows, right? I figured you’d want to see where we’re going.”

I purr contentedly – there’s no better word for it, but I dearly wish there was – and leap at her face, spooling through the shadows to the back of her hood. She stumbles backwards in shock, the hood angling with her head and forcing me backwards as a little bit of light creeps in, before she steadies herself.

“ _Please_ don’t do that again. The last thing I want is to set my clothes on fire in full view of the neighbourhood.”

The shudder that accompanied her words has me feeling a little guilty, so I form a hand in the back of her hood and give her head a few reassuring pats. That seems to work, as she immediately starts to walk forwards. She takes me towards the water, rather than towards the tall buildings behind us, and part of me is a little confused. Maybe she has a secret cave, like a smuggler?

The truth is even stranger than that fiction. She walks us out onto a jetty, with a few unnaturally white boats moored up in a tight cluster, before turning right. My view, limited as it is by the hood, is suddenly filled by the strangest sight I have ever seen. It’s like someone has taken a street of houses and placed it on top of the lake itself; the jetty is flanked on either side by two-story houses, floating on top of the open water. There’s an expanse of water between each building, like an alleyway, and a lot of them have boats parked in the same place most families would put a car.

“Pretty cool, right?”

I can’t help but agree, staring in awe at the strange floating buildings. Ember steps up to one near the end, with walls of painted red wood and a simple metal number on the white painted door. She fumbles with her keys for a second, before stepping through into a surprisingly homey entrance hall, waiting for me to crawl out of her jacket before hanging it on a peg next to half a dozen others. I look up at her, tilting my head in confusion.

“Okay,” – she sits down on a staircase that runs along the right wall – “so we as an organisation do have, like, secret bases and that, but I personally don’t. The closest thing I have is the security centre in the Red-Light district, but that’s not really the sort of place you’d want to be living in. What I _do_ have is a spare room, at least until I can sort something better for you.”

I take another look around the hall, noting the subtle personal touches that have been built up over time, and nod at her. There’s something comforting about seeing a place that’s been lived in, rather than just somewhere that people have chosen to stay. There aren’t any pictures on the walls, but the shoes and coats in this room speak to a divide between the outside world, and this sanctuary. That’s the difference between here and the derelict factory, and I’m quite happy to share the space if it means I get to stay here.

She flashes two thumbs up at me, and makes her way up the narrow staircase to the second floor. I follow at her heels as she leads me into a small mezzanine area with three doors and an angled bay window, looking out over an expansive balcony and the even more expansive lake. There’s something fundamentally welcoming about that vast stretch of dark water, but I turn my attention back to Ember as she opens up one of the two doors to the left of the window.

The room is simple, with small window on the far wall looking onto the jetty, and an even smaller one on the right that looks into the water between this building and the next. They pale in comparison, however, when compared to the enormous bed in the middle of the room, with a mattress that looks to be at least a foot thick! I leap up onto it and immediately curl up into a ball, trying to sink as deeply as I can into the soft springy material.

A low laugh draws my attention back to the doorway, where Ember is leaning with a wry grin on her face. She’s holding a duvet, and she tosses it unceremoniously on top of me. It takes me a few moments to scrabble about under it, but eventually my head pops out at the wrong end of the bed. Somehow, the duvet is even softer than the mattress.

“I’ll be in my room if you need anything.” – she jerks her thumb over her shoulder, pointing at the door on the other end of the hall – “If not, then I’m going to turn in for the night. One of the many downsides of a shift that ends at three AM is that it doesn’t leave much room for anything except sleep when I get back. Goodnight!”

She swings the door shut, leaving me along in the room. In _my_ room. That thought is almost as comforting as the duvet I’m curled up beneath. I have somewhere that I can call my own again, somewhere that isn’t decrepit and abandoned, somewhere free from damp and secure against the elements. Or at least as free as a floating house can be. I feel like it shouldn’t work, like it should have toppled over into the lake long before I arrived, but I’ve already seen so much that should be impossible. What’s a floating house when compared to corpses puppeted by machinery, or towers that scrape the heavens?

No. I’m not afraid of the house. I feel safe here, in the comforting soft darkness of the first bed I’ve felt since I got here. I feel comfortable, at peace, but I don’t feel tired. It’s far too early for that. So I creep out from under the duvet, dropping down onto the carpeted floor of my room. I look around, finding another radio on my bedside table but I decide against turning it on; I don’t want to sleep right now, but that doesn’t mean I can wake up Ember with loud music.

Instead I gently push open the door and step silently out into the hall. The door across from me is Ember’s room, so I leave it alone, but curiosity has gripped me, and I’m determined to have a good snoop around what might well become my new home. The door next to mine opens into a study, roughly the same size as my room. It has a far more professional air than Ember’s home, with one of the strange devices I saw in the electronics shop on top of a wooden desk. Her drawers are locked, so I leave them be. I slink back out of the room, feeling a little guilty. Ember seems welcoming enough, but the study is very definitely _her_ space, in much the same way that my room is mine.

I creep back down the stairs and open the first door I see, finding myself in a well-furnished kitchen. I can’t make heads or tails of a lot of the machines, but one thing that does draw my eye is the mess. The faux-stone countertops are grimy, and in need of a wipe down, while stray scraps of packaging are everywhere to be seen. I open up the trash can – overflowing with refuse – and take note of the strange black bag that lines it. Plastics have the be one of the most confusing things I’ve ever seen. They’re so universal here that they really ought to feel familiar to me, but instead I’m constantly surprised by just how much stuff these people use them for.

I rummage through the cupboards until finding a whole bunch of plastic bags, rolled up into a compact black cylinder. It takes me a while to reach some of the rubbish, but eventually I manage to figure it out. If I use my forepaws to pull my torso up over the top of the counters, then I can use my more dexterous arms to grab at the refuse and pile it into the bags, tying them off before piling them up next to the trash can. In truth, the rubbish isn’t really that bad. It looks like the sort of mess that would come from someone too busy to tidy up, rather than someone deliberately neglectful.

I guess I just have an eye for cleanliness, especially now that I live somewhere worth cleaning. Sometimes I wonder where these strange quirks and impulses come from. It feels like I learn something new about myself every day, but never anything really important.

There’s a door in the kitchen that leads to a sort of combination living and dining room, with a table at one and a cluster of couches at the other, in front of another bay window that looks out onto the lake. As before, my eye is drawn to empty food packets on the dining room table, and some other trash near the couches. I spend a while cleaning as best I can, eventually steeping back out into the hallway in search of cleaning materials. I find a small utilities room tucked under the stairs, with yet more strange machines and a few more familiar cleaning materials.

I spend my time going through all the rooms in the house – except for the bedroom in which Ember is still soundly sleeping – with a damp rag and a feather duster, removing what might be months of dust from the furniture and adding two more black bin bags to the small heap in the kitchen. If I had been anyone else, then the noise of this endeavour would have long since woken Ember. As it stands, I’m almost unnaturally silent as I move throughout the house. I don’t know if it’s because I’m far lighter than the average person, or if there’s something about my power that muffles me. Knowing my luck, it’s probably both…

By the time I’m done, the sky outside the wide windows of the house has started to turn to that faint purpley-red that comes just before the dawn. I’m sprawled out on one of the couches, feeling contented with my work as I look over the spotless living room. It was a welcome distraction from every trouble that’s been eating at me, and by now I’m much too tired to give them any thought. Instead, I creep back up the stairs and crawl underneath my duvet, curling up into a ball in the middle of the bed. Something still isn’t quite right, so I reach with my hand up to the head of the bed and slowly pull down a pillow until it’s resting beneath my head. Cocooned in comfort and safety, I swiftly fall into a dreamless sleep.


	10. Initiate: 2.02

Heat washes over my skin and I panic, ducking back into the shadows before I’ve even opened my eyes. I dash down the rapidly disappearing shadows under the duvet and slip into the darkness beneath the bed. If I had lungs right now, I’d be panting.

“Rise and shine! It’s time to – hey, where’d you go?”

From my hiding place, I see the duvet land in a crumpled heap in the corner of the room – a room currently bathed in daylight from two separate windows. There are a pair of feet there as well – barefoot, the colour of hazelnuts. They move around anxiously pacing around the room in obvious confusion.

“I could have sworn…”

She paces around anxiously, before dropping to one knee to peer under the bed. It’s Ember – I’m not sure why I expected someone else – but she’s not in her work clothes… or her _work_ clothes. Instead she looks like she’s just got out of bed; I can’t see any other reason someone would willingly wear shorts that short. I watch her from the shadows for an instant, her hair an unruly mess that frames her face as she peers under the bed, before forming my eyes in the scant few patches of darkness deep enough to hold me.

“There you are.” She grins at me. “C’mon, you can’t spend all day in bed! It’s already midday!”

It’s midday… I’d honestly forgotten that existed. I don’t want to go out; I want to stay here where it’s dark, where it’s safe, but I know that’s not really an option. So, I start to slink through the shadows at the edge of the bed, thinking of the dry room, the bed and the company over and over in my head like a mantra, and stretch out an arm. It feels uncomfortable in a way I can’t quite explain, but not as bad as it could have been. It must be because it’s not quite direct sunlight, just light bleeding in from the room’s small windows.

I know I shouldn’t fear light like I do. Sometimes, when I think about sunny days or the bright lights of the city, I feel a sort of distant longing for them. I used to look out the broken window of my ratty old room in that factory, and find something close to comfort in the glittering lights – a sense of distant familiarity. It never lasted. I’d always lose that feeling beneath an overwhelming sense of unease, and whenever I saw the sun rising over the ocean that unease would turn to outright fear, and I’d bolt back to my gloomy home like a rat scarpering for shelter.

But I can’t do that now.

Fear creeps through me as I step into the light, and I realize something. It’s not the _light_ I’m afraid of, but the absence of shadow. Daylight permeates every inch of the small room, leaving me nowhere to hide. At night, there’s always _somewhere_ within arm’s reach that I can creep into, some shelter I can find when things get too much. But there’s none of that in the day; what few shadows there are simply aren’t dark enough.

Ember’s already left the room – I can hear her feet on the stairs – so I creep out after her. Now that I know _why_ I’m afraid, it’s a little easier to deal with. It’s still there, but fear is always less drastic when you understand it. Even so, stepping out into the hallway – with its expansive bay window opening up onto a vista of blue water and even bluer sky – feels like willingly walking into a furnace, while turning away from it and clambering down the comparatively shady staircase feels like leaving the furnace for a room that’s hot, but not scalding.

There’s a small gasp from the kitchen, and I pounce down the last four steps in a single leap, landing with catlike grace before cautiously poking my head through the doorway, dearly wishing that there was a shadow nearby I could spy from instead. Ember is poking her head through the door to the living room and, when she turns back to look at me, I see a bemused smile on her face.

“Did you clean up?”

I nod, beaming up at her.

“ _Why_?”

She sounds more than a little exasperated, but it’s not like there’s anything I can say. How am I supposed to explain that I’ve been living in dust and filth for _weeks_ , and that if I never have to see a single speck of it again then I’ll die happy? How exactly do I get across to her that cleanliness is next to godliness when I can’t even speak? I chirp enthusiastically, and shrug all four of my shoulders.

“Right…” she sighs a little, “we’ll need to figure that out, but I’m not going to do it on an empty stomach. Switch the stove on, would you?”

She opens up one of the cupboards, a strange one that’s separate from the rest of the kitchen and made from a strange white material. It’s quite sparse inside, but what really shocks me is the slight chill from within, and the electric lights illuminating the whole thing. I guess it’s just another thing I don’t understand.

I use my forelimbs to lift my torso up to the stovetop and start to look around for a box of matches, only to stop short as I see the flat surface where the gas rings should be. There are circular outlines, and the dials needed to control the flow of gas, but the actual _stove_ itself is missing. I reach down in confusion, turning one of the dials to the highest setting and listening for the tell-tale hiss of gas. There’s no sound; instead, red rings start to glow on top of the flat surface. I reach out hesitantly and almost put my hand on one before common sense prevails.

It might not look like a stove, but it has most of the components of a stove – if not the most vital ones – and Ember called it a stove. Even _I_ can put two and two together.

Ember returns with a pan and a packet of bacon, wrapped up to preserve it in the cold cupboard, or so I assume. She cooks the bacon in a frying pan, before setting it aside on two plates and scrambling four eggs with a dash of milk and a knob of butter. There’s something so wonderfully _normal_ about the sight – even with the strange stove – that I spend a while just drinking it in. It feels like I’ve come in from the cold.

Actually _eating_ the food proves a little troublesome, not least because I freeze up at the sight of the sun gleaming off the lake outside the massive bay windows. Sitting down is the main difficulty, but eventually I’m able to sit on the dining chair in much the same way that dogs sit on the floor, my forelimbs gripping onto the edge of my seat while I use my hands – and the helpfully provided knife and fork – to tuck into my breakfast. From the look in Ember’s eyes, she seems to find the sight a little sad - which doesn’t do wonders for my self-esteem, but I can see where she’s coming from.

She seems to catch herself, maybe seeing her sadness start to spread to my own face, looking away from me and around the room, her sadness changing to surprise and confusion.

“You must have been up all-night cleaning this…”

In spite of her statement, she seems surprised when I nod in agreement, her mouth widening ever-so-slightly.

“When did you… hold on a second.”

She leaves the room, while I wait perched on my seat. When she returns, she places a notepad and pen in front of me before returning to her seat.

“When did you go to sleep?”

She sounds a little more confident this time. I pick up the pen – idly noting the strange translucent barrel and the even stranger pencil-like nib – and start to scrawl out my answer in disappointingly unsteady handwriting, turning the notebook around and sliding it across the table to her.

‘When the sun rose.’

She winces, looking more than a little guilty.

“Sorry for getting you up, even if it was midday. Seems like your sleep schedule is even more fucked than mine is.” – I wince at the foul language, but she doesn’t seem to notice, or care – “So you’re properly nocturnal?”

I stretch my arm across the table – almost falling off the chair as I lose my balance – before Ember takes pity on me and passes the notebook back over.

‘I sleep most of the day, only heading out after sunset.’

That answer seems insufficient to my eyes, so I scrawl another line.

‘I don’t like the sun. There’s nowhere to hide, and that makes me feel afraid.’

“Are you afraid now?”

I nod my head, hesitantly, while waving my hand a little to indicate uncertainty.

“I _am_ sorry.” – She looks even more remorseful now. – “I can’t promise that you won’t need to come out during the day, but it won’t ever be for a mission. It’s just that some of our people keep normal office hours…”

She trails off as I slide the notebook across the table.

‘I can endure a little discomfort.’

I mean it, too. I’ve got warm food in my belly, a roof over my head and the softest bed I’ve ever known. Sure, daylight is a nuisance, but it’s nothing compared to living on the streets, stealing sandwiches from random stores and sleeping in a derelict factory.

“Okay, but if it gets too much, I want you to tell me.” – I give her a pointed look and she groans – “ _Fine,_ I want you to _let me know._ Unfortunately, we need to head out today. Jaeger got back in the city yesterday, and he’s been asking after you. He handles a lot of our enforcement and security work, so he likes to meet the new Capes. He’s a bit of a hardass, but I’ll be there with you.”

I nod my head to show I’ve understood. Truth be told, ‘enforcement and security’ doesn’t exactly sound appealing to me, but I guess this is the price I need to pay. Ember disappears back upstairs for a while, before reappearing dressed in some of the same clothes I saw on businesswomen returning late from work.

She holds up the back of her grey jacket, and I gratefully slip into the space between it and her soft pink shirt. From the way the light moves, and the occasional glimpse down the back of her skirt as the jacket shifts in the wind, I’m able to follow along as Ember walks to her car, though my view drops out entirely once she’s sitting down. With this much daylight around, there’s not really any sufficiently deep shadows anywhere that isn’t completely enclosed from the sun. It means I can’t sneak a peek every now and then, instead forced to wait until the jacket starts to move again, as Ember leaves her car. The harsh sunlight gives way to harsh electric lights and Ember stops.

“I need you to come out now.”

I slip out of her jacket quite quickly, though not as quickly as I could have. I don’t want to risk undershooting my exit and ripping her jacket from her shoulders. In an instance, I’m standing by her side. She’s put her mask on, but not her costume.

“Have I told you how weird that is? I couldn’t feel you at all, not even when you were pressed between me and the car seat. You’d make one hell of a spy. Plus, it saved on the blindfold.”

I would cock an eyebrow, if I had one. Instead I tilt my whole head, and blink three sets of eyes at her.

“I’m _joking._ Nobody’s going to blindfold you.”

She strides to the end of the short corridor, pushing open a set of double doors with both hands.

“Even _if_ you weren’t supposed to see this place, it’s much safer to just drug people.”

A cavernous hall opens up before me, lit by lights that hang from a crisscrossed lattice of metal struts that run all along the ceiling. There are at least two dozen men and women in the hall, engaged in some strange form of group exercise, sprinting from point to point before dropping to the floor and exercising their arm muscles. I can see sweat on each of their foreheads, and they seem to carry themselves like soldiers, though I can’t see any officers supervising their exercise. Unlike Ember, none of them are masked.

“Hey. Want to see something funny?” Ember whispers conspiratorially to me, before taking two steps forwards and cupping her hands around her mouth.

“Solomon!” she shouts in a commanding tone, and the delicate military machine falls into disarray. There’s nothing drastic, but the sheer volume of the effect is impressive. Sprinters stumble momentarily, while other exercisers are thrown slightly off balance. Two dozen heads turn to look at us, before they seem to regain their senses. They subject Ember to a brief but violent cacophony of the foulest language I’ve ever heard, all their previous unity having gone out of the window, before going back to their exercise.

Their noise has drawn another man, who strides leisurely down a flight of stairs set into the wall, on the opposite side of the hall to us. He’s clearly another soldier, but he’s masked like a cape. His uniform is formal, well-tailored, and somehow more recognisable to me than the ones worn by the grey or black-clad soldiers that patrol the streets. The uniform is the deep green of the forest, held together by black buttons and trimmed with red at the collar and cuffs. Every inch of it screams discipline and precision, while the pistol holstered on his thigh.

Behind his mask, I can _feel_ his eyes roaming up and down my body, assessing me with a dispassionate gaze. I shuffle a little to the right, moving much of my body behind Ember to get that comforting feeling of being even a little out of sight. She seems to notice my distress, stepping forwards to head off the man – who must be Jaeger.

“Isn’t this the part where you admit defeat? I was right about her, and the soft-sell worked.”

Jaeger’s eyes flick off me, the corner of his lips curling up in something that’s almost, but not quite, a smile.

“Whether it would work or not wasn’t the point. It was whether it was safe.”

His accent is a little different to Ember’s, but it’s not like I’d be able to use that information to tell where he’s from.

“I’m still up a hundred dollars,” Ember replies smugly.

“We should continue this in my office,” Jaeger says by way of an answer, turning and walking back up the stairs without asking for us to follow. He simply expects it.

His office is nicely furnished, with plush carpeting and rich wooden furniture of some dark wood. The décor is distinctly martial in theme, with firearms prominently displayed on the walls and some much more advanced models in a secure case by his desk. He takes a seat in a high-backed leather chair, leaving me and Ember to the slightly less ornate chairs on the other side of the desk. Ember practically melts into her seat, while I perch unsteadily on mine.

“So…” he begins, turning his eyes on me, “you want to join the Elite.”

“She’s already in the Elite,” Ember retorts, while I simply wilt under his gaze. “You agreed that I’d handle this my way, remember? That means she’s _my_ hire.”

“Can’t she speak for herself?”

I shrink into my chair, my tail unconsciously drifting into the shadows beneath his desk. I want to run, to hide, and it takes everything I have to keep myself corporeal. I can’t meet his eyes anymore, instead looking at the front of his desk.

“No she can’t, you insensitive prick.” Ember leaps to my defence, and my gratitude towards her grows.

“Ah…” For the first time since I got here, Jaeger’s eyes soften a little. There’s a hint of pity in them now, something I find just as painful as the cold, calculating, stare he had before.

“Has she chosen a name?”

It hurts that he asks Ember, rather than me. I know why he’s doing it, I know that I won’t be able to answer, but it still hurts. He seems to have written me off as a crippled and broken thing.

I may be mute, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it when people talk around me.

“We settled on Nightcrawler.”

“ _Crawler?_ Really?”

“ _Night_ crawler. The ‘Night’ is important.”

“I’m sure it is…” Jaeger mutters to himself, his fingers clattering over a strange board set in front of one of those picture screens.

“Night. Currently in use by a vigilante in Los Angeles. Formally used by a vigilante in Salt Lake City, but they had to change it to Midnighter when they cut a plea deal with the Protectorate. Used by a minor villain in Boston… That one’s a Nazi. How lovely. The copyright is held by a corporate cape in Houston.”

“We’re the Elite,” Ember interrupts, “why should we give a shit about copyright? Besides, it’s Night _crawler._ The ‘crawler’ is important.”

Jaeger leans back in his chair, looking down his nose at Ember.

“You’re fucking with me.”

“Always. But Nightcrawler is the name she chose.”

That brings his stare back to me, but this time I’m determined to meet his gaze. Being blindsided like that has wounded some reserve of pride I didn’t even know I had. I stare at him, six eyes overwhelming his two, and open my beak just enough to show him how sharp it is.

“I suppose it fits.”


End file.
